


The New Doctor

by TheGuestAlikai2



Series: A Mop [2]
Category: Doctor Who, Doctor Who & Related Fandoms, Doctor Who (2005)
Genre: F/F, F/M, M/M, Multi, New Doctor (AKA if Pinstripes.2 wasn't a thing)
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2020-10-06
Updated: 2021-01-20
Packaged: 2021-03-07 18:21:24
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 8
Words: 53,697
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/26862055
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/TheGuestAlikai2/pseuds/TheGuestAlikai2
Summary: When Anna Monroe traveled to the Whoniverse to change the outcome of the Time War, she knew that things would change. But, even she couldn't have predicted how much. Now, Anna and the Doctor must face new enemies and old, as repercussions of Anna's actions finally come knocking, and secrets that Anna would rather remain buried are revealed. Part 2 of 'A Mop' series.
Relationships: Doctor/ OC, Tenth Doctor/Rose Tyler
Series: A Mop [2]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1803046
Kudos: 3





	1. Journey's End and Anna's Beginning

**Author's Note:**

> Hello and welcome to, The New Doctor! This story poses the question of what Doctor would've taken Pinstripe.2's place if the Doctor didn't have the hand to just cheat himself out of a regeneration with. This is part two in my series, 'A Mop,' fondly titled because those are the initials of the first story in this series, A Matter of Perspective, which I didn't realize until after I'd already had about half the chapters posted (but also because Anna is like a mop, cleaning up the messes that she can, when she can (ha? Haha? No?)).  
> That being said, you don't necessarily have to read the first story in this series if you're a new reader, which welcome! If you're not, then welcome back! Good to see you in this here part II.  
> Now, onto the story!  
> I still don't own Doctor Who.

As soon as he was done regenerating, the Doctor did what he always did: a quick check of his new body.

"Okay, let's see, hair, still've got hair, that's great, hands, hands are nice, my knees still seem to be intact, that's good, what else-"

"Anna!"

"Anna?"

He immediately whirled around to see that Jack (and it had been Jack, _the_ Jack, Captain Jack Harkness, the fixed point whom he'd left behind on a game station in the future- or _a_ him, at any rate) was kneeling down next to something.

"But how'd she-"

Realization crested through him and he crossed the room at lightning speed as he realized that _the_ Captain Jack Harkness wasn't kneeled down next to some _thing_ , he was kneeled down next to some _one_.

He was to her in no time flat, uttering her name as he knelt down next to her. Her eyes were closed and there was a thin trail of blood leading down from her nose, meaning that she'd done something that had taken more power than she'd currently had.

His hearts broke as he realized what it meant, and he couldn't blame his swaying solely on the fact that he'd regenerated. If Anna had her powers turned back on at all, it meant that she'd therefore died, far and away from him, where he couldn't reach her or help her or be there for her when the time came. All-powerful being with the ability to come back to life or no, dying was still a terrifying affair. He could attest to that better than anyone else. It meant that she'd died without him to be there to comfort her when she came back.

Anger flashed at the alternate timeline version of Anna, the one that had come from Donna's parallel world. He'd trusted her to protect her when she'd taken this Anna from the Chen marketplace, and she hadn't. Instead, she'd let her die terrified and alone without him there to help her.

He pushed his anger aside, knowing it wasn't productive, and gently cupped her face in his hands. He may not have known what he looked like, didn't even know who he was. The only thing the Doctor knew, in that moment, was that he loved Anna more than the stars themselves, as passionately and brightly as a supernova, and he would do or say whatever he had to, in order to help her.

He also didn't know that there was a hand in a jar now sitting less than a metre from him that hadn't been previously. But, that was all right, because no one else noticed it, either.

They couldn't be blamed, really. Especially not Donna, who the Doctor peripherally noted was speaking.

"Where's the Doctor?"

"Anna, hey, can you hear me?" he asked, ignoring the question in favor of trying to revive Anna by simply rubbing warmth into her cheeks with his hands. He felt relief that her skin wasn't coming off beneath his hands, as it was prone to do when she'd used too much energy. All-powerful being she might've been, but even she had her limits when it came to expending energy. That wasn't to say that wasn't a precaution she'd put in place herself; she'd confided in him once that she feared being the wrong kind of being of power, and this could've been a limit she'd placed that couldn't be broken. That being said, it was still unnerving, remembering how the same action in similar circumstances had caused her skin to come off of her cheekbones underneath his hands.

"The Doctor's right there."

Ah, yes. There was also Rose Tyler to contend with.

It wasn't that any iota of himself had forgotten about her. It was that Anna took precedence and now always would. His display on the street probably didn't help matters, but Rose was bright. There was no doubt she'd noticed the wedding ring sitting on his left hand and had to know what that meant, no matter how much it might hurt her to realize it (and how much his own hearts ached at the fact that she was hurting at the thought).

"But how'd you mean?" Donna asked. "That can't be him, he's not- the Doctor's thin as a stick and this one's- I mean, look at his hair!"

Although there was a background part of him that was curious by what Donna meant, he felt irritation snap through him at the distraction, gently taking Anna's wrist in his hand to find that her pulse was steady, hovering a hand over her face to find gentle breaths fanning his palms. He felt relief sag him against the console, and he let out a long breath, his hand still resting on Anna's cheek.

Whatever she'd done had been too much power for her, that was still true, but it appeared the only damage she'd sustained was the nosebleed, and there was no doubt that would heal quickly.

"All right, Doc?"

"I'm fine," he said, and then he glanced sharply over at Jack to see that he was still sitting there, looking at him inquiringly. He wasn't acting like a man who'd been abandoned at a Game Station hundreds of thousands of years into the future, no explanation and not so much as a goodbye. He was acting as if he were seeing an old friend again. Why was that?

It didn't matter. He still needed to get Anna to the medbay, to make sure she truly was doing all right (which he was grateful for the valid reason for getting away from the captain, considering there were knots in his stomach already from being in such close proximity to a fixed point. It would be one thing if it was an event that was fixed. That he could handle because the sensation of it was at least spread out around him, uncomfortable though it might've been. The fact that it was centered in such a small area, in the form of a person, sitting so close to him... he was shocked he didn't already have a headache, though considering the regeneration, that was less a surprise than it should've been).

"Need to get Anna to the med-"

The power suddenly went down, and this new regeneration of his apparently wasn't prone to cursing, because all he did was move to the screen at the control panel to read the readings.

"They have us with some kind of Chronon loop-"

The Tardis jerked, and he quickly latched on to the nearest thing to him before he moved to Anna, every muscle in his body aching to make sure she was still okay.

"There's a massive Dalek ship at the center of the planets. They're calling it the Crucible. Guess that's our destination," Jack quickly explained.

"No, but I still don't understand!" Donna cut in, and the Doctor let out a sigh, letting his eyes close. "How'd you mean he's the Doctor?"

"There's a thing that happens when he dies-"

"I've got it, actually," the Doctor said, starting think about reaching out to pat Jack's shoulder before his entire being rejected that idea. Instead, he was standing as he moved to Donna. "There's something that happens, when I'm dying or gravely injured. I become a new man, but I'm still the Doctor, Donna. It's me. And I know that this is a shock, and I'm fairly sorry for that, but I need to know what's happening, Rose, the parallel world you were in was running ahead of this universe, which means you've seen the future. What happened?"

He looked at her expectantly, ignoring the heartbreak in her eyes. They simply didn't have time for it, not right now. Wasn't that his life? He honestly couldn't remember the last regeneration he'd had where some deadly danger hadn't been present before he'd even finished the full regeneration process. Today would not be that day, it appeared.

Despite her heartbreak, she was still Rose Tyler, and she carried on as she always did, in times of difficulty or tragedy (she was British, after all). "It's the darkness," she told him, sniffling as she swiped at her face. "The stars kept going out, one by one. We looked up at the sky-"

"You're all just okay with this?" Donna asked.

"Donna, I really-"

"He just, what, up and changes his face and it's just _business as usual_?" she asked.

He turned back to her, frustration pouring out of him. "Right now, my wife, who happens to be an all-powerful being, is unconscious, on the floor, and do you know where we're about to be, while my all-powerful, never to be in the hands of the daleks wife is unconscious on the floor? We're about to be in the heart of the newest dalek empire, and I am sorry, I am so truly, terribly sorry, but I need to gain _some_ semblance of information if I have _any_ hope of saving _any_ of us, including Anna, so _please, please,_ just save your questions for later."

"Assuming there is a later," Jack pointed out.

Unhelpfully.

"Helpful," he shot at him, sarcastically.

"What?" Jack asked. "You were the one what just pointed out we're about to be in the middle of the newest dalek empire. Again."

He let out an impatient breath. "Rose?" he asked, looking back at her.

She was looking down, and he frowned before he glanced down to see that she was currently looking at the ring on his left hand.

Okay. Okay, he felt for them, really, he did, but they didn't. Have. _Time_ (and in the one of the twenty thoughts he had at any given time he acknowledged the irony of a time lord not having time).

"Rose," he gently prodded, and her eyes snapped up to his face.

"Right," she said, clearing her throat. "Right, erm... Where..."

"The stars were going out."

"Yeah, they-they were dying, and we-erm," she rubbed at her forehead in a bout of uncharacteristic nervousness. "Basically, we've been building this-this travel machine, this, er, this dimension cannon, so I could... I could..."

"What?" he asked, that impatience seeping through his bones and into his words.

"So I could come back," she finished, rushed. "But, anyway, suddenly, it started to work and the dimensions started to collapse. Not just in our world, not just in yours, but the whole of reality. Even the Void was dead. Something is destroying everything."

"You said something about me," Donna said, sounding a little heartbroken and a bit more than confused, though she was trudging on, as she was also known to do. "In that parallel world."

Rose rubbed at her face again. The Doctor was suddenly hit with the acrid tang of grief in the air, all around him, and he rubbed at his face before he barely shook his head, kneeling down next to Anna. He took her hand in his as Rose spoke, hoping that Anna might rouse at any moment.

"Yeah, the- erm, the dimension cannon could measure timelines, and it's... It's weird, Donna, but they all seemed to converge on you."

"But why me? I mean, what have I ever done? I'm a temp from Chiswick."

There was a beeping from the scanner and he quickly perked up from his kneeled position. He felt his hearts dropping in his chest and he forewent stating the obvious in an attempt to run Anna to the medbay as quickly as possible.

The Tardis had seen fit to rearrange the rooms so that the medbay was closer to the console room, and he silently thanked the ship before he placed her down on one of the beds. Anna was protected and she would be safe, even if the daleks tore his ship apart (and his hearts ached at the thought). She would rearrange her rooms until she...

The point was, she would protect Anna, because even a ship that was slightly sentient knew how important it was to protect a being like her from creatures like the daleks.

He placed a gentle kiss on her forehead and hoped she would wake long before that would ever be necessary.

It was with this final thought that he trudged back to the console room, not at all ready to face the day but knowing that he must, because it was who he was.

Even in this new body, he was ever the Doctor he'd always been.

#####

So, overall, this was turning out to be his least favorite regeneration.

Not only had the daleks not tried to get into the Tardis, they'd simply burned her, Donna and Anna both still inside. He hadn't actually felt the Tardis dying, though, so he was able to hold out some semblance of hope that Anna had woken up just after the trio had exited the Tardis and pulled off one of her miracles (which were not few and far between and were giving him an incredible amount of hope right now).

That said nothing for the actual situation itself, which was turning into Davros and the daleks possibly ending the multiverse, once and for all, lending itself to be one of the reason that this was turning into his least favorite regeneration.

He wanted to say that he had absolute faith that Anna would save them all. But, that would be misleading of the fact that it was about his faith in her at all. If it were up to Anna, she would save everyone, he knew. She was an all-powerful being who'd done much more with much less (ending the Time War so he didn't have to, for a start).

But, it wasn't always up to Anna. Being the right kind of being of power meant that she adhered to the laws of this universe, including the laws of time. If this was something that had to happen, she would let it. No matter how much it made her heart break to.

The only solace he could take was the thought that she'd made an alternate dimension specifically for this reason, so that people who weren't meant to continue life in this dimension could live out the rest of the days they never would've had, happy and healthy, safe, and with their loved ones, if they could. If Davros did destroy the multiverse, as he seemed to so want to, at the very least, he wouldn't be able to touch that.

As the Tardis materialized, he realized that he might not have to rely on the alternate dimension. Perhaps Anna had stepped in. Or, perhaps, it was a small miracle. That could bump up this regeneration's favor by about a thousand.

He held out that hope for only as long as he saw the man he'd just regenerated from step out... to get promptly shot in the chest.

"That's helpful!" he got out, through gritted teeth.

He felt horror rolling through him when he saw Donna step out of the Tardis, pick up the gun, and then also _immediately_ get shot.

Yes, he thought, pushing himself up against the edge of the forcefield in order to get to his possibly dying best friend. This was definitely turning out to be his least favorite regeneration.

#####

Here was the score:

Anna had done story math. Because they'd never traveled with Martha, the Tardis had never picked up Jack. It meant that Jack's 'Doctor detector' had never made it's way on to the Tardis, which meant that...

When the Doctor regenerated, he'd not been able to do his cheat regeneration.

It was a new Doctor that stood before her, chestnut hair and no longer thin as a rake, which meant that the suit that he wore was now extra tight.

For a moment, Anna froze, utterly and completely.

The only reason she'd allowed _Turn Left_ to even play out was because Rose needed to get her happy ending, and that started with _Turn Left_ (which she could feel even more now that she had her powers back on, thanks to her future self turning them back on, after her and 13 had manipulated her present self into turning them off). But, if there was no metacrisis Doctor, there was no happy ending for Rose. No Doctor to grow old with. Even if she did start traveling with them again, it wouldn't be the same. Besides which, if he traveled with Rose again...

What about Amy? And Clara (assuming she even still existed)? River? Even Rory, because, despite the fact that he'd only traveled because Amy was, he was still a companion.

The line of companions would cease to exist here because Anna and Rose would be enough for him.

It took her breath away. She could feel it, how content he would be, having Rose and Anna at his side. The three of them, traveling and having adventures, all of them happy and content (despite the fact that Anna wasn't sure how that was possible, considering Rose was madly in love with the Doctor and Anna was now married to him. Somehow, she felt that it could work, and it would. Perfectly).

But, it would change everything, forever. And, even if it was a happy ending for the Doctor, it wouldn't be a betterment to the universe.

Which meant that she had to fix things, and fast.

Getting the hand was the easy part. In fact, it was the _only_ easy part about this. The next step was literally drawing the regeneration energy from the air. It was a bit like separating egg from cake batter after it had already been mixed in, and then reforming the egg, shell and all. Actually, it was _exactly_ like that, and it was _exactly_ as hard as it sounded. Each molecule was delicate and had to be treated with great care, which also meant that she had to freeze time to do so if she didn't want the daleks interrupting this fun little job (little. Ha).

In total, it took her about an hour of frozen time to do all of this, and by that time, the sum total of what she'd done that day included teleporting herself from the void space her and 13 had been in to have their little chat, as well as actually having her powers turned on. Despite the fact that they were on, things were still slow to process. So, doing something this advanced and coupling it with freezing time for as long as she did...

It only made sense that she had passed out to the grating as soon as time was back in motion.

#####

This day just kept getting weirder.

When she woke up, she was in the medbay, but that wasn't the weird part. The weird part was who was sitting above her when she did.

She automatically frowned. "Stephen?"

He looked exactly as he had when she'd seen him last, the same piercing blue eyes and sharp features and the full head of chestnut hair-

... Which seemed oddly familiar for a different reason, but she couldn't pinpoint as to why.

He was holding her hand and she felt a pang of longing rush through her before memory of the fact that she was married danced through her head. _Nostalgia, thy name is Anna_ , she thought, but the emotion didn't mean anything. It was just longing for the man who'd literally saved her life. It didn't run any deeper than that.

"Just take it slow," he said, and she felt that same pang of longing. Okay, this wasn't... acceptable. She was a married woman. She couldn't be having feelings like this for other people. Not on this scale. "It's all right. You're safe, you're in the medbay, you're on the Tardis-"

It was in that moment that she realized her empath sense had kicked back in. Those weren't her pangs of longings that she was feeling. They were Stephen's. It meant-

"How'd you mean, I'm on the Tardis? How're you on the- how'd you even- what's-"

He immediately soothed her. "Anna, it's all right, just take it slow," he said.

She tried to sit up before he put a gentle hand on her shoulder.

"Anna, it's okay-"

Her eyes widened and a shudder of realization ran through her at the fact that he was calling her Anna. He didn't know her by that name, so how could he-

"What're you doing here?"

A surge of his nervousness went through her that he couldn't quite hide, try as he might as he put on the bravest face she'd ever seen.

"It's me, Anna. The Doctor."

She stopped processing. "I'm sorry, what?"

"Yeah, I- I regenerated, bout three hours back? Goodness, the time doth fly when you're saving the universe and not understanding why your wife created a metacrisis version of yourself, who's currently standing in the kitchen, terribly worried about you, just by the way-"

"You're gonna- you're gonna have to back _all_ the way up," she said, and he fell silent, searching her, though there were traces of disappointment that he was desperately fighting against, clinging onto hope harder than she'd ever felt anybody cling to anything. "You're Stephen McGuilvery," she said. "So I'm not sure why you're-"

...

"Saying that you're..."

...

"The Doctor?"

She felt the relief trail through him. "Yeah, Anna, that's me. That's me, I'm the Doctor, your husband, remember?"

She raised her eyebrows before she barely shook her head. "But you can't be."

Disappointment struck him so fiercely that it made _her_ flinch.

"Anna, it's me," he said, quietly, for lack of knowing what else to say. There was no other way to describe how he was feeling except that he was a kicked puppy. "I'm the Doctor," he repeated, again, as if it would make more sense the third time he said it than the first.

Least to say, it did not.

She was eager to correct him. "You're Stephen McGuilvery, you're not- you're not-" she laughed a little, barely shaking her head. "I'm so confused."

He looked at her, and she didn't understand the bitterness that was welling up within him. "Right," he said, barely nodding as he stood. "Right, why don't I just... get the Doctor, and he can explain it?"

She felt a helpless confusion trailing through her. "Do you think it would help?" she asked.

He shrugged, his hands firmly in his trouser pockets. "It might," he said.

He was wearing an eccentric vest underneath a black pea coat, and he was suddenly a thousand times more guarded than he had been just moments prior. When he exited the room, she watched him as bitterness trailed after him, though that was the only emotion she could feel from him, potent as it was.

She didn't have time to fully take this in. Maybe ten seconds later, Captain Jack Harkness rounded the corner.

He wasn't as dazzling as the show made him out to be, this effervescent portrayal of just charm and wit and everything else he'd been on the show. Maybe it was because there was something trailing in his wake, though it wasn't the bitterness she'd been met from Stephen not moments prior.

"Hello, Anna Monroe," he said, but his smile wasn't genuine. He was searching her for something. "Captain Jack Harkness. Pleased to meet you."

She raised her eyebrows. "Yeah, you... too."

Disappointment and an acceptance of the inevitable trailed through him, and he pulled up a stool. "We gotta talk," he said.

"Oh?" she raised her eyebrows, pulling her knees up to her chest. "What-what about- actually, you know what, maybe this could wait-"

"It can't," he said.

"Okay."

He smiled sadly. "Sorry. Just know how fast this life of yours can be. Now that you're up, it's a quick goodbye and then out the door. Well, I guess you could say I know your... husband?" he asked. "Congrats, by the way. Didn't know that you were married."

She frowned, confusion of a different sort creeping in. "Did you... know anything about me?"

"Yeah, I do, actually. I know that you're Anna, and that you despise coffee, despite the fact that Ianto Jones makes the best coffee in all of the U.K., and probably beyond. Know that you grew up in America before you emigrated to the U.K. for 'personal reasons,' as you called them, and I also know that-"

Okay, what? "'As I called them?'" she asked. "What the hell are you talking about, Jack?"

He smiled, though it was probably due to the fact that she'd just called him Jack as if they were old friends, acting so familiar with him despite the fact that she didn't actually know him (well, in-person, anyway). He just had that effect, she supposed. Probably part of the 51st century pheromones.

He leaned forward as he spoke.

"I'm talking about the fact that sometime in your future, you're going to head back to 2006 and come work for me, at Torchwood, and you're going to lie to me about who you are. You're going to tell me a fake last name and fake a paper trail that even I can't see through, and you're going to gain my trust so that I can get to this point and find out that you're actually an all powerful being called Anna Monroe who married the Doctor." he searched her eyes. "Am I making myself clear enough for you?"

She barely raised her eyebrows before she shook her head. "Why... would I do that?"

He smiled, but it was bitter. She was jolted when she realized that he was bitter because she'd broken his trust by lying to him about everything. After a moment, he shook his head, standing.

"I'll leave you to ponder that." He started to walk backwards, giving her a finger salute. "See you in the future."

She furrowed her brows, but watched him go, turning and walking from the room.

"Yeah," she said, quietly, confused. "See you."

As if that wasn't enough, the day got even weirder.

Rose Tyler rounded the corner.

She recognized the blonde instantly. It wasn't hard, considering she'd seen her round about an hour ago in the alternate timeline with Sadasaclam!Anna.

After the initial shock, she swept Rose's emotions for any sort of anger or vitriol, but the only thing she was met with was surprise and a meekness trailing in her emotions that didn't fit her character in the slightest. Yes, this day was extraordinarily weird. Because, despite the fact that she hadn't met Rose Tyler in person, she appeared to be coming to visit her.

"Oh, hey," she said, adding to Anna's confusion. "You're-you're up, good-good, just, erm, wanted to check on you, see how-how you're doing." She frowned. "Where's the Doctor?"

The only way to describe Rose Tyler's emotional state was strange. It was a bit like if someone was hiding something huge and important that the person they were talking to couldn't know about yet, but that they longed to say. It was more than just a secret that she was hiding, though. Rose was longing for something else, or someone-

The Doctor.

Oh.

"Oh," she said, quietly. "I don't- erm, I don't- I don't know, how're you? Are you doing-"

"He's-He's regenerated, don't know if you saw that before you, you know, passed out or whatever. Are you-"

Everything about her froze on the spot. At the look on her face, Rose's eyes widened.

"Blimey, Anna, you-"

Because she did it. She put the puzzle pieces together. And, it was not a great picture.

Well, the picture itself was fine. But, coupled with what had just _actually_ happened, and it was _not_ a great thing.

Because what she'd said, how she'd said it, she must've- it must've looked like she was rejecting him outright. His own wife, whom he apparently still loved post-regeneration, and she'd just basically been unable to accept his new face.

Except that wasn't what had happened at _all._ But, _he_ wouldn't know that, would he?

"Jesus Christ," she whispered.

She immediately ran out the door, shooting past Rose and throwing a cursory apology over her shoulder as she did so.

She'd never feel that trailing longing that was coming from Rose as she did so. Nor would she ever be able to put together who it was actually for.

But, that's a story for a different day.

Anna felt like she was hallucinating when she ran into Pinstripes in the hallway. For a moment, she just stood there, staring at him, thinking that perhaps it had all been a dream, that he'd never regenerated and she would still get to be there for him when he did, because that's all that she wanted was for him to know that she'd been there and ready to accept him with open arms.

But, the bitterness blared from behind him and when she looked over his shoulder, she saw the man she'd thought had been Stephen McGuilvery standing behind Pinstripes, looking down at the ground, his hands in his green trouser pockets which reached well past the tops of his shoes. He refused to look at her, though every part of him said he wanted to glance up at her.

Understanding crept through her as she looked back to the Doctor in front of her. The metacrisis version. "Anna," he said, relief fully in his voice, and he went to embrace her.

She made a calculated decision, then. If she embraced the metacrisis version first, the Doctor would think that she still wasn't able to accept him, and that would only add to his feelings of bitterness, breaking his hearts further. If she brushed past the metacrisis version to get to the Doctor first, it would clear all of this up, but the same misunderstanding would be happening, just with a different Doctor.

Either way, she was about to break one of their hearts.

In the end, it wasn't a choice, not really. She brushed past the metacrisis Doctor and spurned his hug as she quickly moved to the Doctor, grabbing his shoulder. He frowned as he looked up at her, but she put an end to that when she kissed him.

Surprise filled him before a voracious mix of relief and longing filled him as he kissed her back with all the ferocity of a man whom thought he was dying and this would be his last kiss. She drew back all too soon, apology after apology leaving her lips before the Doctor shushed her.

"It's all right, you were confused, it's understandable."

She shook her head. "We've to talk," she said, grabbing him by his hand and pulling him down the hallway.

She glanced at him, the metacrisis Doctor, the one wearing the blue suit that, in the television show, usually was foreboding of bad things. The look on his face said that was still true here, the one that said he knew what it meant that she was kissing the Doctor and not him (who was still the Doctor, as an aside).

In the end, it hadn't been a choice. She'd chosen to break the heart of the Doctor she was about to leave behind.

But, she didn't have time for it or for him. She had a story to tell the Doctor, and that aside, they had people to drop back home.

She just hoped that Rose wasn't too cross with her before she found out what it was that she was giving her.

#####

It all ended on Bad Wolf Bay.

Even in this universe, that hadn't changed. The grey day that had Rose seeing the second time she would have to say goodbye to the time lord Doctor was still in place, as well as the heartbroken look on her face. It was almost too much for Anna to bear, especially since she knew where it was that she and the time lord Doctor would be heading next.

But, she would be brave. Even after the day that she'd had, with Sadasaclam!Anna and everything that that had entailed, she would not be a coward and turn away from this. The only good thing to come out of this day was that Martha was still there, even if the Doctor's first impression of her had technically been the whole Osterhagen Key business.

Well, that and Donna would be saved, even if she might not be traveling with them for a while.

These facts, these good things, were the things she clung to in order to make herself braver, as she looked at the heartbroken face of Rose, and, more importantly, the heartbroken face of the human Doctor.

"No, but I spent all that time trying to-" strangely enough she glanced at Anna before she stumbled over her words, "-to find you, I'm not going back now," she objected.

"I know you did," he told her. "And I'll never be able to put into words what it means to me that you've done this, or any of the other things that you did for me. We saved the universe, Rose, but that came with him. He committed genocide against the daleks, and that makes him dangerous, even more dangerous than I was when we first met. You made me better, Rose, and you can do the same for him."

"Doesn't Anna get a say?"

The human Doctor spoke up, and though his sentence had been directed at the time lord Doctor, he looked at Anna as he spoke.

She wasn't sure that this day could get any harder, but she also wasn't sure that she'd ever had such difficulty forming words in her entire life.

"I'm sorry," she said, quietly.

"For what?" he asked her. "You made me, remember? The human version of the Doctor. So you know that I am him, Anna, through and through. And you made me a promise. In sickness and in health."

A sickly sort of surprise went through her and she froze time, even as her chest ached at the action, signaling that she was still low on power.

"Stop it," she said, before she shook her head. "Do you have any idea what I'm giving to you?"

"A broken promise?" he tried.

She grit her teeth before she shook her head. "You were supposed to love that woman to the ends of the Earth, the Defender of the Earth, and I came in and I _messed_ that up, I-"

Even human, he moved fast. He was to her in two strides and he'd taken her face in his hands, kissing her.

She didn't even hesitate, immediately jumping back from him.

She started to speak, to reprimand him, but stopped, not prepared for the fierce look in his eyes as he spoke to her. "Anna Monroe, I have obviously been _complete_ rubbish to you if you think that you've done anything _less_ than make my life a thousand times _better_ than what it was, let alone that you could've _messed anything up_." He let out a harsh breath through his nose before he shook his head. "I might not be wearing the ring but I _am_ still your husband. Till death do us part, remember? And this is nowhere _near_ death, but if you leave me standing on this beach knowing that I will _never_ see you again, that _will_ be like dying, over and over again."

She shook her head. "You'll have Rose," she said, weakly.

"But _she isn't you_."

She felt a well of emotion burst through her at that. After the day that she'd had, she did what she'd never done before. She just started _shouting._

"You're right!" she said, and he looked taken aback. "She's not _me,_ she's _a thousand times better_ than I'll ever be, and you want to know why?" she raised her eyebrows. "Because she's not nearly as powerful as me and she's still..." she looked at him hopelessly. "She's _everything._ She's _Rose freaking_ Tyler, courageous and wonderful and human." She shook her head. "I might be what you want, but I'm not what you need. Right now, you _need_ Rose Tyler."

He shook his head. "No," he said. "Maybe you're right, maybe I do need Rose, but I don't just _want_ you, I _need_ you, Anna. Please. Don't do this. Don't leave me behind because you're afraid."

"Afraid? Afraid of what?"

He started towards her, gently, before he grabbed her hand. Despite what she knew was about to happen, she allowed him to do it, even as he placed her hand against his chest. "Feel that?" he asked, quietly, searching her eyes. "It's my heartbeat, singular." After a moment, he shook his head. "You're not trying to abandon me on this beach because you think that Rose Tyler is what's best for me, you're trying to abandon me on this beach because you're scared of losing me one day. Because that's suddenly more a possibility than it ever was." He grabbed her face in his hands, and once again, she let him. "But I'm telling you now that having the days and losing me is better than never having the days at all. Anna, please." He shook his head. "Don't abandon me on this beach. Don't- if-if it'll make it better, we can even take Rose with us, but please." he shook his head. "Please, just take me with you, because I am your husband, and you made me a promise, to love me, no matter what. Please, don't break that now because you're scared of a future that's still a clear sixty, seventy years away."

A hint of desperation leaked through to his eyes, though she could feel all of his emotions.

"Please."

If it hadn't've been for the day that she had, relieving everything vicariously through Sadasaclam!Anna and then having to fight the alternate timeline version of the Doctor and then finding out that a future version of her Doctor and herself had manipulated her into turning her abilities off using what she feared most about herself, maybe the terror and anguish and suffering he was feeling wouldn't have been too much for her. Maybe it would've been easier to walk away.

But, she'd already walked away from a maelstrom of emotions like this once, today. She couldn't do it. Not again. Not to the person with the face of the man that she loved.

So, despite the fact that time dictated that she had to, in order to keep the timelines progressing as they were meant to, she shook her head, tears in her eyes, a sob lodged in her throat. "I can't do this," she said. and she thought she'd never sounded so small in her entire life as she did in that moment.

"So don't," he said, even as she tried to pull away from him. "Anna, please-"

"What's happening?"

She'd unfrozen the time lord Doctor and she looked back at him, the human Doctor having released her before he stood partially in front of her.

"I won't let you do this," he told the time lord Doctor, in no uncertain terms. "I won't let you abandon me on this beach-"

"I'm afraid you don't have much of a choice."

She raised her eyebrows before she turned away, scrubbing at the tears in her eyes, even as the sob refused to unlodge itself from her throat.

"Anna, unfreeze time."

"No."

She shook her head, new tears forming that she didn't bother to scrub away.

"No, Rose shouldn't have to hear this-"

"Rose _needs_ to hear this," the Doctor said, and she looked over at him with a look as fierce as the one the human Doctor had been giving her. He didn't back down. "I know that this is hard, and after the day that you've had-"

"You don't know _anything_ about the day that I've had-"

"You died," he said, and she frowned, barely shaking her head. A saddened look crossed his face, softening his features. "You can't lie to me about this, not even to spare my feelings. You had to've died, in order to utilize your full powers-"

"This _doesn't matter_ ," the human Doctor said.

"Then you're not half the Doctor you claim to be, let alone half the husband you appear to so want to be." Anna was surprised by the hint of anger in his eyes. "I've just said that she must've _died_ and you throw back in my face that it doesn't _matter_?"

"That's _not_ what I meant-"

"But it's what you said," he told him. "You just said that it doesn't matter if Anna died, when that is the most important thing, because it means that we weren't there for her when we should've been. We weren't there to comfort her or hold her or to help her through the transition." Regret sparked in the Doctor's eyes as he looked back at Anna. "I'm so terribly sorry for that. If I could head back-"

"And what about me?" she asked, barely shaking her head. "I wasn't there for you when you regenerated, I wasn't-"

"That wasn't your fault-"

"And neither was it yours when you weren't there for what happened which, by the way, wasn't my dying." She felt a feeling barely poking her that she couldn't mention that a future Doctor had been there for her when what had happened had happened, and she dutifully followed it, even if she'd no idea why it mattered (and how quickly she had slipped back into following feelings, even after not having followed them for so long). "He's right. What happened then doesn't matter, but what is happening does." She shook her head, pain in her eyes. "I can't do this. I can't just abandon him on this beach because he's right. He's my husband just as much as you are, and I love him, and I don't want to do this."

The time lord Doctor measured her with a long look.

She expected for him to do a lot of things in that moment. For him to gently remind her that this was the way it had to be, for time to progress as it should, but that it was okay because he would be there for her, no matter what. Some terrified part of herself that still existed to protect her from her mother's emotional abuse told her that he was about to scream and shout at her that this was the way things had to be, and if she didn't like it, he'd force her to (even though that wasn't in the slightest bit rational... But after the day she'd had, she wasn't sure she could take the chance).

He did none of these things.

Instead, he nodded.

"Okay."

She felt unease slip through the human Doctor while confusion (and a tiny bit of terror) filled her.

The Doctor continued. "All right. If this isn't what you want, then it isn't what we'll do. Unfreeze time, let Rose know that she's coming with us. We'll all get back in the Tardis, fly away together, how does that sound?"

"Stop it," the human Doctor said, through gritted teeth, and in that moment, she was slightly on the same page as him, hurt curling around the edges of herself.

"I'm being one thousand percent genuine, I promise you," he said, as he held up his hands. "Because whatever did happen put her in so much pain that she can't do what needs to be done for time to keep progressing as it should, and if that is the case, then I'm not fighting it." She felt surprise rush through her for a few different reasons. "I love her just as much as you do- no, you're human, so I love her more than you do. Just a biological fact, I'm afraid. And I don't want to see her pained anymore than you do." He turned back to Anna. "So, if you'd like to unfreeze time, let Ms. Tyler know that we're heading out, I'd be thrilled. Didn't particularly feel like abandoning her on this beach in two separate bodies. That'd be a new record, even for me, one I didn't particularly want to set."

She felt her anxiety starting to grow for a different reason as she looked back at the other Doctor. "He's right, though," she said, and the time lord Doctor looked back at her. He'd turned away, starting to walk towards the Tardis. "He's right, if we take you with us, both of you, then time doesn't progress as it should-"

And the time lord Doctor would have to watch Rose Tyler die.

She could see it, then, in her mind's eye. Rose Tyler, growing old in the Tardis, withering away and dying, but it was more than that, because the metacrisis Doctor would die, too. They would die happy and leave the two of them behind, burdened with the knowledge that the people that they respectively loved _had_ died, though it would've been nobody's fault except for time.

The decision was made for her, then, and she barely shook her head. Before she'd even gotten her sentence out, a look of panic snapped through the human Doctor's eyes.

"No, Anna, don't do this, I will- I'll find a way to come through, even if you abandon me here, I will use _every_ resource at my disposal to fight you on this."

She walked up to him, gently cradling his face in her hands. He shook his head, closing his eyes as he turned his face into her hand.

"I'm sorry," she said. "I'm so sorry. But, you fight me on this, and you will lose," she told him, simply.

He frowned deeper before understanding reached him. His hearts hardened as his eyes opened, that same hard look on his face.

"Just accept this and love her. Please," she nearly begged him, her words barely above a whisper. "For me."

He didn't speak, but the look on his face was enough.

Even the knowledge that Martha would end up traveling with him (another thing she'd nearly bungled up) and that Donna would survive to travel with them another day was not enough to keep her brave. Instead, she teleported back to the Tardis before she restarted time, hiding away so as to not have to face the consequences of her actions.

#####

The Doctor found her on the jumpseat, gently swinging her leg back and forth.

"Is it done?" she asked, not looking up at him.

"It is," he said, after a quiet moment.

She nodded, biting her lip before she sniffled.

"Oh, but they'll be all right, though!" Donna said, as she walked around the rotor. The Doctor put a gentle hand on Anna's shoulder and she squeezed her eyes shut, tears dropping. She swiped at her cheeks as Donna continued. "They've got each other, and we've got each other, the three amigos! What do you think? I was thinking we could try for Felspoon, just because. What a good name, Felspoon. Apparently, it's got mountains that sway in the breeze. Mountains that move. Can you imagine?"

"Donna."

But, Donna ignored him, already anticipating what she thought he was about to say. "Nah, you're right, that's rubbish, mountains that move, who needs to see that? What about- you know who I've always wanted to meet? Charlie Chaplin. I bet he's great, Charlie Chaplin. Shall we do that? Shall we go and see Charlie Chaplin? Shall we? Charlie Chaplin? Charlie Chester. Charlie Brown. No, he's fiction. Friction, fiction, fixing, mixing-"

"Donna, Donna-"

"Oh my god."

"No, it's okay. It's okay. Because I think you know what's happening, but that's fine, because-"

"I want to stay," Donna said, terror in her voice.

"I know, Donna, I know. But, Anna's come up with a solution for this."

Anna raised her eyebrows, not because it wasn't true, but because she didn't want to do this. She was saving Donna, but she was also giving her a choice that she shouldn't've had to've made.

"What is it?" Donna asked, sounding terrified and hopeful, all in the same terrible measure.

Anna barely smiled before she looked up at Donna. "You have two options," she told her. "Because, if he had taken away your memories, to save you, you would've had a life, with a husband and children and grandchildren and the whole lot of it-"

"But I don't want that," she said, and Anna barely shook her head. "I want to-"

"Let her finish," the Doctor said, quietly, a gentle hand already preemptively placed on her shoulder. Donna looked back and forth between the two of them. She barely nodded, though she looked apprehensive the whole time.

"You can still have that," she told her, quietly. "I can take your memories and place them into a pocket watch, the same as what was done with the Doctor. You can live your life as Donna Noble, with the husband and the children and the grandchildren, and at the end of it, you can open the pocket watch and be the Doctor Donna again, no cost to you or your big, beautiful brain, and you can travel with us again in the future." Anna barely smiled, before she shook her head. "Or, I can just place you in the Doctor's future, and you can start traveling with us then. It's your choice."

She frowned. "Why-why the Doctor's future? Why not now?"

She felt a sob catch in her throat at the thought of how she was about to say it was for the same reason she'd left her husband stranded in a parallel world with the love of his life.

But, she barely shook her head. "Because he also has to live a life before he can see you again."

"But either way, we will see you again," he quickly interjected, grabbing her shoulders. "You'll be saved, you'll just have the choice to live the life that you were supposed to if Anna- if Anna takes away your memories like she's saying she would."

He'd almost slipped up and said that it was the life she was supposed to live if Anna hadn't've been there, but caught himself at the last minute, barely glancing at her.

It was more like if Anna hadn't've intervened. After the day she'd had, it felt like that's all she was. Someone who messed things up. Someone who didn't leave any good in their wake.

Where they were going next wouldn't help much with that thought process, either.

She didn't focus on that. Instead, she focused on Donna, and the choice that she had to make.

"But- but what about you two? How're you two supposed to get on without me? What if you need me?"

Anna barely shook her head. "We'll be okay. Not because we don't need you, or because you aren't important, but because we'll know that you're living a fantastic life, or that you're there, in our future, waiting for us." She barely smiled, a spark of something like hope flitting through her chest, and it gave her the strength to stand and walk up to her. The Doctor moved aside so that Anna could place her hands on Donna's shoulders. "The days that we'll have, Donna Noble, will be extraordinary." She nodded. "And now, it's up to you when you want those days. It's your choice, Donna Noble."

There was a brief spark of panic in her eyes before she shook her head. "You have to promise me that you'll remind me to open up the watch when the time comes, or I swear, I'll shout at you from the beyond until you do. Don't think I don't know that you can bring people back from the dead, _Anna Monroe_ ," she said, echoing the fact that Anna'd weirdly said Donna's full name twice in the span of as many sentences. "Cause I do, and I'll find a way back to torment you until you bring me back, I promise."

"Not before I pester her until she does, I promise you."

Donna looked over at him in surprise and he nodded. She looked between them uncertainly, before she looked just at Anna.

"But how am I supposed to give all of this up?"

Anna shook her head. "You wouldn't be," she told her. "Because you wouldn't remember-"

"But I'll know," she said. "That whole life, I'll always know that something's missing-" she cried out in pain, clutching her head, and Anna quickly caught her before she fell.

"Listen to me," she said. "Right now, you have to know that you aren't giving us up. The only thing you'd be giving up is your husband and your children. That's what you'd be losing. You'd be losing the human life you were supposed to have, and that, Donna Noble, that is a travesty, because traveling with him is great, the memories, the glitz, the glamour, even the terror is well worth it, but it's not all that life is about. It's also about husbands and the way that they remember to make your favorite soup when you're sick or the way your kids wake you up on Christmas morning and even the fights that you have. It's about the jobs that you have and the friends that you make, and that, Donna Noble, would be what you would be giving up. Not us, but them, the people who love you and the people that you love. Please, Donna. Don't make this decision because you're scared. Make this decision because you know that, in your heart of hearts, it's the right thing for you. Please."

In that moment, Donna Noble might've been part time lord, but she made the choice as a human.

In the end, Anna held her memories, the pocket watch still warm in her grip. The Doctor had offered to do this next part alone, but she went with him to drop Donna off back home, to live her wonderfully fantastic life, leaving them behind for the time being.

When they made it back to the Tardis, entering the console room, they were both surprised to see that everything had changed.

No longer was she coral struts and grating on the floor. Instead, she was sleek and shiny, metal sheets lining the walls and an open floor plan around the time rotor. The rotor itself was decorative, adorned with shiny new buttons that looked and sparkled like jewels. On the wall behind the rotor were two arm chairs pressed up against the wall with a coffee table between them and a door to the rest of the Tardis to the right of them. When Anna would walk over to it later, she would see a glass covering in the floor where a never ending library of books resided.

A smile broke out on the Doctor's face.

Anna, though, broke out into tears, finally letting the day catch up with her and everything that it had entailed, but also crying because she knew what was coming next.

The Doctor would find out the truth about her, and no part of her was ready.

But, that was not now. For now, the Doctor did as the Doctor did, hugging his wife and comforting her through her tears and her heartbreak, relieved and happy that she was safe and alive in his arms.

For now, it wasn't just enough.

It was absolutely everything.


	2. Chapter 2

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> TW: Brief mentions of suicide. Brief character death.

"We don't have to talk about it."

A surprising amount of fear gripped her, making her throat and chest tight with apprehension. He'd only asked a simple question, one he'd probably assumed would be a lighthearted topic, perhaps even a good memory.

_Before, in the medbay, why did you call me Stephen?_

The response had fallen so easily from her lips, before he'd even finished uttering the last name, the word still on the tip of his tongue.

He looked startled, or as startled as the Doctor could look.

_Oh my god, this is the Doctor._

She had the thought for a second, but it was still there. After staring at the same faces for almost two-thirds of her life, suddenly having to get used to the new one was strange. By virtue of having watched him for so long, she'd memorized every contour of all of his faces, the way each one lit up with a new idea or laughter and by the same measure, fell into darkness each time he was met with a foe who wouldn't be helped.

But she didn't know this face, with it's sharp cheekbones and bright blue eyes that were dimmed with sympathy and a want to know what was happening inside of his wife's mind. The unruly chestnut hair (that she would no doubt enjoy running her fingers through, which wasn't now) and the fingers meant for playing the piano.

But, as quickly as the thought had appeared, it disappeared. But, looking at him now, she saw the same man who's home planet she'd saved and whom she'd married (even if those two actions had spanned two different bodies). She saw the same man who loved to save the universe and travel it in the same measure. Even if he looked and spoke differently, this was still the Doctor.

She loved him just as much as she had before.

Yet, the thought of revealing this, the one crucial thing she hadn't told him about her past, terrified her. It didn't make sense. The excuse she'd given to the alternate timeline Doctor, about why she was refusing to talk about it, hadn't just been an excuse. It hadn't been her story to tell, because she wasn't his Anna (no matter how much he might think that).

But, now that she was presented with an opportunity to tell the right Doctor, _her_ Doctor... She was wavering. Why?

Why should she have to, though? Hadn't she been through enough today, she reasoned? First with Sadasaclam!Anna, then with 13, and even _Journey's End_? She'd just stopped crying but tears pricked the corners of her eyes as TenToo's face flashed through her mind, the sheer terror at the thought he was about to never see his wife again suddenly becoming the reality he'd never wanted it to be.

It was for this reason that she broke out into a smile, something that made her look manic instead of excited as she was aiming for, and spoke. "Our next adventure awaits!"

#####

"Where are we?"

"Well," he said, stepping out after her, the Tardis door closing behind him. "It appears to be a baggage car."

It did appear to be a baggage car on a train, though she didn't feel an engine rumbling beneath her feet, and the noise of a train was suspiciously absent. There were a couple of boxes littered about, random supplies and such lying on top of those.

Despite the fact that he spoke the truth, she turned back to him to give him a sarcastic eye roll.

"You think you're adorable."

She was surprised by the sheer amount of panic that crossed his face at that.

"Am I not?"

She furrowed her brows before she remembered that he'd only regenerated a few hours prior and she quickly went to reassure him, worrying about him in the same breath.

"Oh my god, no, you're- you're very adorable," she said, moving to stand directly in front of him. He looked as sheepish as she would've if she would've suddenly shown the same amount of emotion at the same comment. "How're you feeling by the way? We can head back and get some rest, if you'd like-"

She was surprised when he, without much noise or movement, twirled her so that her back was pressed against the Tardis, her front pressed flush against him. This him was graceful, light on his feet (and some part of her thought about how his next body wouldn't be anywhere near something resembling graceful, and she barely smiled before she barely frowned at the thought of him regenerating, again).

"There's currently only one activity I'd like to do that involves a bed, Anna Monroe." He dipped his head lower, breathing in her ear. "Sleeping isn't it."

She couldn't help that she shivered at the sentiment.

It was rudely interrupted by the thought of Stephen, and guilt flashed through her so quickly and fiercely that she cleared her throat, gently easing him off of her. She could feel his bare disappointment and uncertainty through their connection, and she barely raised her eyebrows, both annoyed and sad that she would have to act a little more carefully around him right now, in the hours right after his regeneration.

Regenerating was like losing yourself and every bit of you and then somehow standing on the other side. She could only imagine what that was like, especially coupling that with people who weren't from a culture where that was the norm, and having friends suddenly look at you like you were a stranger. She didn't want him to ever feel like that around her, that uncertainty that he wouldn't be accepted, but she was in a delicate emotional state right now. Compensating for his insecurity, while she'd normally be happy to do it, was something she wasn't sure that she was capable of right now.

She let out a sigh, her face still turned to the right of herself.

"Listen," she started, quietly.

They both listened then, and her brows furrowed as she watched as the Tardis materialized right next to her.

#####

The Doctor stepped out of the Tardis, so sure that he'd gotten the date right this time. There had been an uprising in 5468 in the Parsnet Quadrant, and a Dues Ex Machina had fallen from the sky to resolve the whole thing. After thirty years, this would be his lucky break. He would find her, and they would start traveling together again.

The Doctor and Anna in the Tardis. What a wonderful thought that was.

Distaste filled him when he saw that it was a baggage car that he'd stepped out into, but he stopped when he turned to the right to see who was standing beside the Tardis.

His breath was stolen from him and he felt made whole. A moment later, in a breathless whisper, her name fell from his mouth.

"Anna."

He'd spent the past thirty years imagining that her body would be nothing more than a mangled, broken, and bloodied mess, her mind not much better after the torment of the angels.

To see her like this, alive and healthy and whole, it was almost like a dream, a rock dislodging itself from his chest to allow him to breathe easier. He wondered for a brief moment if this were a dream, about to start to reach out to touch her-

But his body stopped, and he'd no idea why before his eyes skimmed to the bloke standing in front of her.

His hearts only sank down further into his stomach when his eyes next tracked to the rings sitting on their left hands.

"Oh."

Never in all of his time searching for her since Wester Drumlins had it ever even occurred to him that she might've simply... moved on. That she was done with him and the life that he led. _Of course_ , he bitterly thought, barely taking in details of the bloke (except he was him so it only took him three seconds to take in the chestnut hair and the sharp blue eyes and the stupid long coat that reached his stupid knees). Why would she want to hang about with a bitter old man still wounded by the War that had nearly wiped out all of creation, which she'd had to step in to stop (no matter what she'd said about what she'd seen on her supposed television show)?

"Right, then," he said. He patted the Tardis as he looked at the floor, fighting the emotions brewing in his chest which suddenly ached with heartbreak. "Guess I'll... let you get back to it."

It probably would've been as simple as that. His question was answered, and he would head back into the Tardis, traveling and doing what he did best. Saving people and running (and this time, he was running from the thought that he loved her with everything he had, but she'd fallen out of love with him without so much as a by-your-leave... even if he'd never acknowledge that outright).

Except, she did the one thing that could've stopped him. She spoke.

"Doctor?"

He grit his teeth, barely flinching against the word (and the hope that filled his hearts when she did).

"Wh... Bu..." he frowned at her jumbled words, though he still couldn't bring himself to look up at her (and funnily enough, he couldn't bring himself to move). "I don't understand."

"Oh..."

A long drawn out noise left the bloke's mouth, and at that, he did look up at him, frowning sharply (Definitely not trying to scare him because what would be the point of that? Besides which, he was married to an all-powerful being. He was bound to be fearless after that).

"Oh, I remember this." The bloke's eyes flicked over the Doctor's face, a blank expression on his that didn't match his tone as he spoke his next words. "Oh, dear."

He frowned deeper at that as well.

"What're you on about?"

"Well, you see-"

"We've been here before."

He was surprised at how fast Anna's head snapped around at the Scottish burr that spoke from the door none of them had heard opening. Standing in the doorway was an older Scottish man, looking smug as anything with his hands clasped behind his back, wearing a black tuxedo.

"Hello, kids. This is where it gets complicated."

#####

Three Doctors.

_I can't even tell you what I'm thinking right now._

Jack's words were the only thing that could snap her out of her stupor, reminding herself of something else that she'd left unresolved, and she managed to stand beside the Doctor as opposed to... well, behind him or in front of him, depending on the view point.

"Okay, what-"

Her eyebrows shot up as she took in the tux the Doctor had only worn once during the show.

"Oh. _Mummy on the Orient Express_?"

"Yes, that _is_ what's happening," he agreed, though probably not because he knew the episode title (which signaled to her that she hadn't told him, and she made a mental note for later. _Much_ later).

It was strange, though. Here he was, the Doctor in what was hundreds of years in the future (or a thousand or so, depending on how events played out here, which, wow, that would mean that he would still have to be 1103 when he got shot by the Apollo astronaut and live through at least, what was it, five hundred years on Trenzalore before regenerating, thanks to the new regeneration cycle the time lords had given him, which, oh yes, wasn't even necessary because of a certain Timeless Child she wasn't even sure was still a thing here? Or was _actually_ a thing here, if one wanted to be fickle with grammar. She was getting off track and bringing up unnecessarily painful things for herself in the process).

It was very, very strange, she thought, that she would probably one day live to be the same age. She would probably even surpass him. Knowing her luck, she might even-

She was really into depressing thoughts today, and she quickly and succinctly pushed the thought from her mind before she focused.

"You, big ears," 12 informed Leather Jacket, who looked mildly put off by the nickname. "Back into the Tardis."

"Gladly," he said, apparently easily believing that this was a future self.

"Wait-" she started, abruptly feeling a sense of longing. The Doctor was the Doctor, no matter what, but she hadn't gotten to say a proper goodbye to this one. The next time he'd see her was after he'd already regenerated once and traveled with Rose, and then...

Leather Jack didn't stop at her word, barely even stiffened, getting into the Tardis instead. Unbeknownst to either of them, he forgot the encounter right away, the realization the only thing that remained of their little encounter. Anna had moved on from him and his life, and that would be a truth that he would accept, no matter how painfully.

Meanwhile, back in the baggage car, 12 continued over the sounds of the dematerialization circuit.

"You two, stay here. Under no circumstances are you to exit this baggage car, am I making myself perfectly clear?"

"Yes," she said, unable to keep the misery out of her tone entirely.

"Good," 12 said, oblivious to such things (or perhaps purposefully avoiding it, as he had other things to deal with and a mystery afoot, and, oh yes, this wasn't technically his Anna anymore, as was evidenced by the fact that there was a much younger him standing in front her, having just gotten rejected after propositioning her (though what _had_ he expected, after the day they'd both just had?)). "But seriously, I mean it," he said, memory of what had happened here bleeding through, the emotions he'd felt and the turmoil he couldn't shake, even if he tried. "No leaving the baggage car, under any-"

"Circumstances, we've got it, thanks a million," Anna said, raising her eyebrows as she searched him, her eyes saying that he had a mummy to deal with.

Unease shifted through him. Here was the thing, though. Anna was paradox proof. It meant that he could prevent this awful thing from happening without consequences to time.

Future Anna's words echoed in his ears, reminding him that he couldn't change what had happened, no matter how paradox proof she was.

He wouldn't be the Doctor if he didn't try to change at least one thing, especially in regards to the woman he loved.

"But I mean it, though," he told her.

"And we _really, really_ heard you," she told him.

He pressed his lips together and a look of regret flashed through her eyes (though this he didn't understand. Why did she look so regretful?).

"Just-" she fumbled for words, though they were less sharp as she spoke. "We've got it. Thanks. No leaving the baggage car. Got it."

He nodded his understanding, feeling some semblance of satisfaction wafting through him. Maybe she would listen to him this time around. Maybe time would change.

Only time would tell, he thought, as he abruptly closed the door behind himself (unable to completely erase the unease and bitterness from his mind).

#####

"It's especially disconcerting to see the next regeneration after you've just regenerated," he crisply informed Anna, after his apparent future self had closed the door.

His last future self.

A shiver ran down his spine and he barely clutched Anna tighter, forgetting momentarily the way she'd pulled away from him not moments before. He'd already been through eleven regenerations, even if he didn't like to think of The Warrior. He had to now, confronted with it as he had been. After this, he would've regenerated a total of twelve times.

Thirteen incarnations. Thirteen lifetimes. That was all that he was allowed.

During the War, he would've been fine with that. He was, after all, turning into something he swore to himself that he would never be, the monster who slaughtered and didn't save.

But now? Now, he was clutching onto his wife, desperately wishing for thousands of more years with her, desperately hoping that he might get away with ten thousand more (though the limit for time lord bodies was usually a thousand years, so he knew that scenario was improbable, even for him).

"Yeah, I can't imagine that's any fun."

He barely startled, looking down at her as if remembering that there'd been something said. He raised his eyebrows, though he easily allowed such macabre thoughts to slip from him like water through his fingers. He smiled a little more easily at the thought that he was holding his wife, and this might easily turn into something quite a bit more fun, now that they'd been told to stay in the baggage car, under all the circumstances.

"You know what _would_ be fun?" he tried, gently and lightly pressing her back into the Tardis, though it was only after he'd done it that he remembered she'd shied away from him previously. He had to hold back the flinch at the thought that he was doing something she might not want, and the insecurity from before crept back in that she might not want it because this him was new and, apparently, reminded her of someone from her past.

"Do you not trust me or something?"

He was as surprised by the sentiment as he was by the fact that she was saying it at all. Saying that he didn't trust Anna would be like saying that the sun didn't rise in the east or that stars didn't come out at night on Earth. It was an immutable fact, and he looked down at her, about to tell her as such, when she raised her eyebrows, speaking before he could.

"Because you keep acting like any second I'm going to reject you, and there's never been anything as _far_ from the truth as that."

He furrowed his brow, confused about how she'd practically known exactly what he was thinking (though part of him credited that to the fact that she'd known him the past ten years and was able to pick up on certain things, even if ten years was practically over in the blink of an eye for him. It would be eventually for her, after she'd lived thousands of years). A thought crossed his mind that hadn't before, and he tentatively reached out through the connection that they shared, which had been off for over a year, to find himself feeling more than delighted when she reached back, reassurance coloring the touch.

At the action, he started to once more reach out, about to kiss her. A brief thought crossed his mind that he didn't know why this him wanted to be so physical with her. Perhaps it was because he hadn't been there for her whenever what had actually taken place when she'd gained the full use of her powers back had occurred (and part of him did think that she was lying to spare him the pain, as she was known to do, because despite the fact that she'd _died_ , she would've been more worried about sparing him his pain than her own). Maybe it was simply because this body was brand new but still knew that this was Anna and she was _his_ (and a strange territorial feeling passed over him, wild and new to this him, though he remembered the feeling from bodies prior).

Unaware of his thoughts, she once again drew back and rejection drew through him so fiercely that he drew in a breath, finally taking a step back from her as he looked to the ground.

"That's not-" she started, exasperation in the connection as well as in her voice, before she blew out a frustrated breath. "Okay, if I don't want to be physical with you, it's not because you're brand new and I don't understand that, or whatever, it's because I've had a shit day and I'm not really in the mood to get jiggy with it at this current moment in time."

His eyebrows raised before he barely looked up at her. "'Get jiggy with it'?" he asked her, the words sounding and feeling equally strange with his new tongue.

"You get what I'm saying, though," she said, and he barely held up his hands.

"I do," he said, looking at her more fully. "And I'm sorry, for doubting that you understand that it's still me."

Even if there was some small part of him that would always wonder that, now.

It wasn't her fault. Waking up in the medbay, confused as she was, it would've been easy to mistake his new face for somebody else. But, he was newly regenerated and on edge and thinking that his best friend was about to not remember him on top of it. He couldn't really be blamed either for having a knee-jerk reaction to the fact that she'd practically begged for him to go get 'the Doctor' so that he could explain things.

Nor could he really be blamed for the seed of doubt that was sown into his heart for that very reason.

Still, she was right. She was Anna and she'd already traveled with two of his other selves, easily accepting that he was the Doctor both times. Why shouldn't she accept that this new him was just as much the Doctor as those two prats had been (the thought of her being with another him set his teeth on edge. She was _his._ That was fact- ... And this must be a post-regeneration thing, this territorial nature about him. It would wear off in a few hours.

... He certainly hoped so, at any rate)?

Anna straightened out her shirt indignantly. "Thanks," she said, looking around the baggage car. "Now, what're we doing? Because _apparently_ your future self has decreed that we must remain in this here baggage car until..." she frowned, realizing the same thing he had. "When, exactly? And why can't we just fly off in the Tardis? Or maybe he needs us to be here because he'll need us later? Though, having two of either of us for this would be, like, such overkill," she said, and she walked past him, towards what could only be the door.

"What're you-" he stopped when she walked past him again. "Doing."

"Pacing," she said, as if it were the most obvious thing in the world.

He frowned. "Care to share why you might be undertaking this task?"

She shrugged. "Because I'm restless and _you_ haven't told us what we're doing."

He stuffed his hands deep into his coats pocket before he shrugged. "We could always talk about..." he started, before he stopped himself.

Broaching the topic of whoever Stephen McGuilvery was had nearly set her off after an hour of crying had just stopped. He wasn't sure he wanted to broach the topic again, but knew that putting it off was pointless. They would talk about it eventually, and he wanted to get it out of the way sooner rather than later. The way she'd looked at him after she'd thought she'd realized who he was had him thinking it might be a former lover of hers, and he'd rather not imagine that every time she looked at him if that wasn't the case.

So, it was with a great sigh that he looked down at the wooden floorboards before releasing the words, not looking up at her until after they'd all been released from somewhere deep in his chest.

"Stephen McGuilvery."

He couldn't have predicted her reaction if he'd tried. A sharp, visceral emotion cut through him like a knife, and he flinched, rubbing at his chest (though extraordinarily happy at the fact that he could feel anything from her, even if it did hurt). Movement exploded from her as she threw her hands down before she looked at him, a wild look in her eyes.

"You want to know who Stephen McGuilvery is?" she asked, and he raised his eyebrows as if the answer was obvious. She smiled a cheapened version of her smile. "Fine," she said, crossing her arms. "Stephen McGuilvery is you and I know this because I knew that it was you, even if I didn't say it out loud at the time, because that's _insane,_ because who in their _right minds_ thinks that it's possible that a television show character _came to life_ just to talk them out of killing themselves, but there you have it! It was you, because-"

At the look on his face, the confusion, she lost some of her explosive energy and her nerve. She looked at him as she fidgeted, playing with her fingers in a practiced move that only came with anxiety.

"Because a few days before I utilized my full powers, I went to Vegas to kill myself..."

For a long moment, everything blurred together. He felt his hearts stutter in his chest, time impossibly slowing, because what she'd said couldn't be what she'd said.

But, she didn't take it back, and he found she'd even continued when the world had blurred back in.

"...and there you were, or Stephen was, and we..." she shook her head, still looking down at the floorboards. "It doesn't matter-"

"I don't understand," he said, quietly, and she flinched as if he'd physically slapped her. He immediately took a step back, barely holding up his hands for the sheer fact that her flinch was coupled with a fearful look like he might actually hit her.

She let out a slow breath through her nose, though her facial expression didn't relax in the least. Her words were much slower, though no calmer, even as her hands stilled. She _wasn't_ any calmer. After years of knowing her, he recognized how she was frozen with fear, now. "What don't you understand?" she asked, quietly.

"You... tried to end your life."

Her body moved in a wave before she looked up at him. "I would've done."

There was such conviction in her voice and a bare truth in her eyes as she spoke that he felt nausea setting in right away. The world grew a little darker, everything about him growing heavier.

"Why didn't you?" he asked, and he frowned at the phrasing, swallowing as he quickly corrected himself. "I mean to say, what stopped you?"

He tried to pay attention to her words but there was a strange pounding in his head in time to his heartsbeat that was growing a little distracting.

"You," she said. "You were there and you talked me out of it, and-"

It finally registered with him that she was saying something about him being there and he frowned deeper.

"Sorry?" he asked.

His magnificent brain put something together before that he'd never understood. In the hallway just hours after she'd turned off her abilities, she'd told him that they didn't share their past with each other. _Of course I don't_ , he'd thought at the time. She already knew everything about his past, or the things she'd seen on her television show, anyway.

But, she'd been talking about herself. _This_ in particular. The fact that he'd almost lost the love of his lives before he'd ever even known her.

He wanted to sit down. His knees weren't normally this wobbly, and he hoped that wasn't an attribution of this new regeneration. But, there was nothing within reach to sit on, so he had to be satisfied with standing and simply hoping against hope that his legs didn't give out on him right then and there.

She grit her teeth, apparently frustrated, and he swallowed against his dry mouth, trying to be more attentive and aware. "You, this you, will sometime in the probably very near future, travel back to that me and introduce yourself as Stephen McGuilvery and give me just enough hope that I won't end up, well, killing myself."

He _did_ need to focus, he realized an awful moment later. Some part of him, the one that was always The Doctor, noted that there were questions that needed to be asked.

"Um..." he started, looking around.

But, despite the fact that he knew there were questions he _should_ ask, he couldn't remember any of them. For the first time in a long time, his mind was _completely_ blank of all things that might be _helpful_ in this moment in time.

_Had she ever hurt herself before then_?

He barely frowned as the unhelpful question came to him. Why was that important, he wondered?

His hearts fell into his stomach as he realized it would tell him whether she was likely to do this again.

His _whole_ being rebelled against that idea. Of _course_ she wouldn't. She was Anna, _his_ Anna. He loved her and that could be enough, it _would_ be enough.

But, the Doctor was not naïve enough to think that what had drove her to doing this was a simple matter of not being well-loved enough. Depression was a complicated disease, no matter who it affected. It meant he had to dig deep if he had any hope of helping her.

_Can you be her doctor and her husband_?

Donna's words flashed through his mind and he quickly pushed them aside. Right now, he had to be. Anna had known him for nearly ten years, married for nearly a year and a half, and even though she'd trusted him with her literal life, she hadn't trusted him with this. If she was finally telling him this, it meant that she was finally learning how to trust. He doubted that simply handing her off to a 'trained professional', especially in terms of what had happened with the emotional abuse she'd suffered, would lead to anything good.

(It was the paltry excuse he told himself, but it felt very valid in that moment. It was the only thing he allowed himself, considering the only thing he wanted to do was clutch onto Anna and never let her go).

So, he did what he'd never wanted to do with her. For the moment, he forgot that hew as her husband, or even the man that she'd saved from a devastating grief and guilt. For a moment, he forgot that he was anything but The Doctor, talking to another human that he might have to save.

He knew the moment that she recognized it, and the part he'd shut off would've hated it, save for the fact that he'd just shut it off. That was the whole point. He had to be cold and logical to ask all the right questions, else Anna might suffer unnecessarily for it.

"Had you ever tried hurting yourself before then?"

Her face twisted beyond uncomfortable, looking like she was now the one who wanted to be sick.

"We don't have to talk about this now," she said, trying to sound insistent in response to what he'd done.

He didn't let the frustration he was feeling pour out of him. Instead, he got softer.

"I understand how hard this is-" he started, because he did and he wanted her to know that.

A thought interrupted him and his eyes barely widened, frustration rolling through him for a different reason.

Oh, he wanted to hit himself. He wanted to himself and he wanted to throw something and some part of him wanted to shout into the heavens.

He wouldn't remember this.

As soon as the Tardis exited this timezone, he would forget all about Anna's confession, just as he had forgotten about Anna the moment he'd stepped back into the Tardis (never noticing that there was another Tardis to signify that she was married to a future him). He wanted to believe that this was Anna and she would never do anything that would endanger people, least of all herself.

But, her confession had proven that thought process entirely incorrect. Even if he hated the notion, being the Doctor had taught him that she might simply (and very willingly) let him.

He raised his eyebrows as he searched her, watching her as she bit her lip and did the same, measuring him with a long look.

"I don't want to talk about this now."

He blinked.

It wasn't often that Anna was open about things that she didn't want to do. Either she braved them or stewed in a quiet acceptance that she would have to do it before she did the thing she didn't want to do. It was a habit that she still hadn't broken, despite what the past year entailed. It had opened Anna up to him in a way that she hadn't been before, but she was frustratingly bad at setting personal boundaries. Why did it have to be now, when it was more important than ever that she do exactly what she didn't want to do, that she drew the line in the sand?

This situation was made all the more complicated by the fact that she was an all-powerful being. Doctor though he might be, if she really didn't want to do something, she wouldn't. That hadn't been an issue up to this point, for the simple fact that she strove to be the right kind of being of power, something he, as the Doctor, admired her for and something that made him, as her husband, love her all the more for it.

What of that now? In his heart of hearts he knew, deep in his bones, that if he pushed her on this, she would disappear, though not in any permanent capacity. He trusted her enough to know that she'd come back eventually, though the process would repeat itself into oblivion, or until something worse happened.

He stood up straighter at the thought, rearranging his smile into something more reassuring, though her lips were pressed into a thin line as she prepped herself for a routine she knew well. She'd expected this, for him to push and prod at this sore spot, because that's what she'd been trained to expect. Even a year trusting him with her literal life hadn't trained that out of her.

So, he did the thing she didn't expect (even if it killed him to).

"I won't remember this," he told her, quietly, and her eyebrows shot up on her forehead at that before they furrowed. "Whatever happens here, from the moment that my older self stepped into the doorway, I won't remember. So, whatever you tell me here, right now, in this current moment, you can simply use as practice for when you do tell me." he searched her. "I can tell that you're terrified to share this with me, though I've no idea why, and it's not the point. Whatever the reason that you're so terrified to tell me this, I can guarantee you that you'll be met with nothing but understanding and love so please, Anna, please, if it'll make it easier, just start by telling me when you know I won't remember, so that you'll know what to expect when you tell it to me for real." he searched her. "Because one way or another, and I mean this not as a threat, but as a fact, this will come out. And I want it to be when you're good and ready. So please, Anna. Please. Just tell me so that I can start to help you."

She started to look convinced, and a hope filled his chest. He was confused, then, when she looked over his shoulder and a relief filled her eyes. When he looked back, he saw that the carriage was empty.

Despite this, she spoke. "Show's over," she declared, and he turned back to see that she was taking steps towards the Tardis. "Come on."

"Anna, wait," he said, catching her upper arm but careful not to clasp her wrist (because he might've been in a new body but she wasn't, and he doubted grabbing her wrist was a favorable thing to do, especially when she'd reacted so poorly all the previous times he'd accidentally done it). "What're you doing? My future self said-"

"Your future self just saved the day," she said, pointing to something behind him, and he frowned as he turned back to see the still empty baggage car. "Come on, before the air gets sucked from the-"

"Anna, I've no idea what you're talking about," he said, turning to look back at her, starting to fear for her sanity (or the more likely explanation that she was simply distracting him from the conversation... and it was made all the worse when he realized that this convenient distraction happened just exactly when he began to talk about how he wouldn't be able to remember this conversation. Oh. Okay. That was more than a little disappointing. His hearts fell a little. They were playing games now. Splendid (and let it never be said the hours after his regenerations were boring). Just for good measure, he spoke). "There's nothing there."

She frowned. "Are you st-"

Her eyes widened, her mouth frozen open mid insult.

"Oh," she said, quietly.

#####

She could see the mummy, but he couldn't.

They didn't have time to lose, or time to waste. She raised her eyebrows before she nodded.

"Okay," she said, her upper arm still clasped in his hand. "Set a mental timer for, ooh, say, fifty seconds?" she tried.

It should've been obvious. It wasn't as if the mummy was exactly standing still, but, well, there had been the simple matter that she was in denial and, actually, fairly confused. Why would the mummy try for her? She wasn't injured-

... Well, except, she was still running pretty low on power, and if she stretched the definition, she supposed she was still suffering from the aftereffects from some pretty nasty PTSD, the wound ripped open by what had happened with Sadasaclam!Anna.

"What for?" The Doctor asked, obviously disheartened.

She honestly couldn't have cared less why he was disheartened, in that moment. She shook her head, starting past him, but he didn't let his arm drop from her grip, jerking her to a halt, though he wasn't anything but gentle. She glanced back at him, taking him in, before she raised her eyebrows.

"Okay, so, shortened version, there's a mummy that takes 66 seconds to kill people-"

He frowned. "The Foretold?"

"Yeah! How'd you-" she frowned before she heard the ragged breathing behind her, and she quickly shook her head. "Anyway, point being, apparently, I'm it's next victim, so, need to come up with a solution, fast."

He frowned and, despite the fact that he didn't believe her, he was obviously going with the façade because not going along with it would be more dangerous than just going along with it for the simple fact that, if she were telling the truth, it would end up killing her and he would've done nothing about it.

"Obvious solution?" he tried. "Into the Tardis."

He started to drag her back to the blue box before she dug her heels in. "Under no circumstances, remember?" she tried.

"Yes, but-" he let out a noise of frustration. "Fine, what did _you_ have in mind?"

"Well, I could always-"

A feeling shot through her chest so fiercely that she actually cried out from it, leaning against him at the breathtaking pain of it. So, simply surrendering to it was out. What about disentangling herself from it, so that she wasn't the next victim?

Here was the problem with that, she realized not a moment later. The mummy was old, and at this point, she'd no idea how old. It was already out of phase, which meant that, if she tried to disentangle herself from it, it might end up simply scattering the atoms of the mummy, and that would produce the same result as simply surrendering would, except something at the edge of her senses tingled and told her that that would be so much worse.

Which meant what? That... she was left with...

"Oh."

It hit her, like a bolt of lightning shooting through her chest. She searched his eyes, barely licking her lips, before she raised her eyebrows.

"Oh, what?" he asked her, before she searched his face, memorizing every inch of him as she'd yet to do. She reached out to touch his face, and he let her, though it wasn't without trepidation on his part. "Oh, what, Anna? Forty seconds, what are you-"

She stood on her tiptoes and smashed her lips onto his, kissing her with a fervor even she wasn't aware she was capable of.

It only took him a moment to respond, simply for the passion of it, which made him forget everything else going on. She could feel his dual heartbeats pounding away against his chest, ferocious and there and so _alive._

As alive as she wouldn't be here in a moment.

She drew back from him suddenly, tracing her thumb over his cheekbone. "I love you," she told him.

She disappeared.

When she reappeared, it was in front of the twelfth Doctor, who was looking around wildly, already making it three steps by the time she'd appeared in front of him.

"-see it, anybody?!" he demanded, wildly, looking around at the crowd.

"I can."

"But where-" the train conductor Perkins started.

"That doesn't matter, fix it, Anna," he said.

He was rolling with the punches, already to her in a few short steps as he clasped her face in his hands.

"I can't, I just came to tell you that I'm the one who can see it so that you're not spending the next minute and six seconds running around like a chicken with his head cut off."

A horrible realization spread through him. She could feel it past the frenzied emotions that other Doctor was feeling, trying to bust through the shields she surrounded the baggage car in as a precaution.

"That doesn't make sense, Anna, just fix it," he said.

He was so obviously still in clear denial and she smiled a soft, sad smile.

"It's okay," she said, before she nodded. "I'll make sure that it doesn't hurt, and I'm not afraid, and I'll see you soon- well, the past you, at any rate-"

He frowned so hard that his angry eyebrows became furious. "Why're you talking like that?" he asked. "Why're you talking like you're-"

"Twenty seconds, Doctor," Perkins announced.

"-about to die, just fix it, Anna," he ordered her.

"I'm telling you that I can't," she told him slowly, though her heartbeat picked up a little bit in her chest when she heard the ragged breathing behind her. "The Foretold still has work to do, and I need to let that happen-"

"According to what, Anna?" he countered. "To some television show that's not even-"

Unexpected frustration filled her so fiercely that it made her chest ache. "It's not just a television show anymore!" she told him, and he looked taken aback. "These are real people, with real lives, and if I _don't_ let this play out, then things happen that shouldn't, lives that shouldn't be lived are, and I will not turn myself into that type of being of power because you're a little scared of my death, despite the fact that we _both know_ I'll come back."

Her frustration had turned to desperation by the end of her sentence (even if the unspoken 'I will not turn myself into that type of being of power to prevent myself from feeling guilt over the deaths that I could've prevented but didn't' rang out between them). She reached out to touch him but he flinched back as if she'd burned him. "Doctor, please," she said, the fact that he hadn't let her touch him making her shockingly desperate to do just that one last time, an unexpected sob chocking her at the thought.

She might've been an all-powerful being, always able to come back from the dead (with the exception of one surefire way and one way that was iffy and she hoped she would never test), but that didn't stop his unexpected emotions bubbling up, infecting every part of her.

A wild look developed in his eyes, and he took a step towards her. "Go to the other me," he said, but before she had a chance to interrupt him, he barreled over her. "Die with him. Just don't die alone, Anna, please, for me, don't let yourself crawl away like a wounded animal to die alone, please, for me," he said, and she furrowed her brow.

"Five seconds."

She could practically feel the mummy breathing down her neck and she spoke quickly.

"I don't want to hurt you."

She started to teleport out. By the time that she did, he'd spoken. "This would-" she managed to catch, before she teleported out.

She'd never hear the end of his sentence.

She teleported herself to an empty baggage car, and let the mummy take her.

#####

In the end, he managed to solve it, just like he always did. Just not quick enough. Proof of that was in his wife's body laying prone on the floor, staring at nothing, though her eyes were mercifully blank of any pain. At least she'd kept her promise about that, he thought, bitterly.

Not that his past self knew that.

All the other occupants of the train were asleep, forced to darkness by the lack of oxygen in the train, which hadn't been a problem for his lungs. Looking at his past self, he remembered that he almost wished it had been, so he didn't have to see this, his beautiful, young wife now dead on the floor.

The other occupants were asleep so the only person that heard his sounds of grief were himself.

"Why didn't you stop her?" he questioned, anger in his tone as he accused his future self, and rightfully so.

"I tried," he said, sounding as unaffected as he always did. This day was already bad enough, why did it have to get so much worse? "Told her not to leave the baggage car under any circumstances, remember?"

"You could've told us to get into the Tardis and fly away," he reminded himself, the fury of the time lord unleashing around him as he stalked to him.

He shook his head. "For it to have acted so quickly, it meant the mummy had already attached itself to her. It wouldn't have made a difference-"

"You could have tried," he spat at him, before he shook his head, turning on his heel and bending down to grab Anna's prone body.

_You think that I didn't want to?_ He wanted to scream at his past self. _Do you think I_ wanted _this? Who do you_ think _stopped me_?

But, that's not how he remembered it happening, and that aside, he didn't actually want to get into a screaming match with his past self. He followed the script like the dutiful Time Lord he rarely was.

"Wait a mo," he said, and he pulled the note from his pocket, extending it between his fingers so the other Doctor wouldn't have to get too close. His past self turned back to look at him, fire in his eyes, but they stopped on the note in his hand. "It's a brief explanation about what's happened here."

A look shot through his eyes. He glanced between his face and the note extended towards him, and uncertainty took hold of him for a moment before he reached out, grabbing it before grasping onto it like it had all the answers.

"Thank you," he said, quietly.

The Doctor thought that his future self had written down what Anna had told him, that that was somehow included in the brief explanation.

The Doctor was wrong. But, even as he exited the Tardis, the note in his pocket and Anna's body wrapped protectively in his arms, he didn't correct his past self. There would be no point. He doubted that either of them wanted the soon to be conscious occupants of the train to be privy to a screaming match between himself, or worse, because he'd no doubt he'd try to write it down himself or try to cheat time by warning himself of what Anna had so briefly explained.

It was so much worse than he could've ever pictured.

But, he pushed aside such unpleasant thoughts, instead reaching out and calling Anna's room.

"It's done," he told her, before he hung up, his hearts thumping in his chest at the thought of an alive Anna rushing to him.

Trying so hard to push the thought of Anna's dead body from his thoughts in the meantime.


	3. Chapter 3

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Dan Stevens is the face of the New Doctor. Forgot to mention last chapter.

In total, it took Anna a week to come back, and it was already long enough for her body to start decaying.

To say he'd been startled to find himself piloting the Tardis, a note in hand and a dead Anna on the floor would be an understatement. He immediately rushed her to the medbay before he scanned the note that simply said, _A mummy got her_ , signed by The Doctor in Gallifreyan circles to prove that it was him.

He wondered, somewhere in his twenty thoughts, why he hadn't been able to save her. He was the Doctor, the man who saved everyone. So, why was he so rubbish at saving his own wife?

It didn't matter, now, not when he couldn't anything about it (except for stew in his own guilt). He quickly went about trying to make her more comfortable so that, when she came back, it wouldn't be to a cold, lifeless body. They didn't talk much about her dying, which meant they'd never discussed what it was like for her to come back.

He mused that they didn't discuss a lot of things, apparently, before he frowned in confusion about where that thought had come from.

Time passed. Anna didn't come back to life, and after a restless day, he started to run scans and the like, trying to figure out why it was taking so long. It was usually instantaneous, he thought, but he quickly put together that perhaps it had something to do with her powers being off for so long. Maybe this would just take longer this time around.

Frustrated, he sighed, continuing with his scans because it was the only thing he could do. But, that was fine, because Anna would come back to life. She always did.

It wasn't until the second day that real panic set in, when her body started decaying.

That had certainly never happened before, and the panic crawled through his veins like fire, forcing him to move faster and scan more. It wasn't until he ran a very out there scan that he realized she'd been put slightly out of phase of the rest of the universe.

It took him another day to correct that, and by that time, true panic was starting to set in. Because, what if, by setting her out of phase of the rest of the universe, it had somehow... disconnected her consciousness, making it so that she didn't have an anchor to get back to?

 _She's fine, she's fine_ , something in his gut reassured him, but he had no way of knowing that for sure and he quickly pushed this thought aside in favor of trying to correct what he'd not known would need correcting.

That reassurance faded as another day trudged on and Anna still didn't come back.

At least her body had stopped decaying, and he took that to be a good sign (even if the only thing he allowed himself to do was stay by her bedside, clutching her hand until she just came back).

At some point, he had nightmares that Anna's body had decayed so much she simply became a skeleton, and he would spend the rest of his life holding the hand that had once been so alive but was now nothing but bone.

He startled awake and didn't find sleep after that.

The emotion when she gasped her first breath back in couldn't be described as _just_ relief. It was stronger than that, a tidal wave through his system, and Anna made a small noise as it sparked through the connection that had been unpaused (paused in the first place because she'd died, she'd _died_ , and it had nearly been permanently this time).

He couldn't help himself. He simply gathered her up in his arms, not even giving her time to get her bearings.

"Thank goodness, _thank goodness_ ," he whispered in her ear, clutching onto her tightly.

"Well hello to you too," she said, in the way that she did when he tried to get her to move before she'd fully woken up.

He was delighted when he realized, past his wild relief, those days were over. No more Anna's human needs needing to be fulfilled. No more sleeping for eight hours, sometimes pushing ten if the day was exceptionally exhausting. No more having to temper his speed because she couldn't keep up, or any of the other things he'd had to hold back because she was human and infinitely more breakable than him.

He didn't mind the humanity. He loved traveling with human companions, and although was annoyed sometimes by their tendency to have human needs, was tolerant of them because they were the brilliant and bright humans he traveled with, and through them, he could once again see the universe in a different way.

It was the fact he'd taken Anna's ability to heal for granted.

It wasn't just her ability to heal. It was also her ability to keep up with his time lord strength and speed. They'd been more than the normal companion relationship. For a short time, he'd had an equal who could keep up with him in every respect.

He'd lost that when she'd turned her abilities off.

Don't get him wrong, he still cherished every moment he'd had with her, every single waking moment of it. Having a human Anna was just as exciting as having the all-powerful being Anna.

But, now that all-powerful being Anna was back, there was so much more he could do, and the thought exhilarated him as much as it excited him.

It was Anna and the Doctor in the Tardis, the way it should've been.

At this thought, he barely pulled back from her, searching her still hazy eyes. "What do you say? Breakfast and then adventures?"

Her emotions stopped before they started, a look flashing through her eyes at that. He credited that to the fact that she'd just come back to life when it quickly evened out before she smiled at him. "Sounds good to me."

#####

"Oh, no, no, no, no, no!" The Doctor exclaimed, before he quickly slammed the door shut behind him. "Anna, grab it, grab the-"

She'd already done so, grabbing the squirming kitten in her hands, which was desperately trying to claw at her.

"Yes, I know, you're upset, that mean dog was chasing you, give us a mo."

She grabbed it by the scruff of it's neck, being extremely gentle, and it was incapacitated, though she felt the terror radiating from every pore.

"Okay, hush now, you're all right," Anna said, quickly cradling it and rubbing at it's chest.

It gently kicked out with it's back feet before it settled into the touch, and Anna was surprised when she realized that it was curling into her chest, trying to soak up the maximum touch, even as it shivered in her grasp.

"Okay, sh, sh," she said, trying to be comforting.

Something was wrong.

She was quickly cut off from this thought process when the Doctor advanced on her, coming towards her with great speed and a mission on his mind.

"You can coddle it on the way to the shelter, come on," he said, and she frowned, looking up at him. He glanced at the look on her face and his eyes barely widened before he shook his head. "No," he said, turning away from her. "I know that look on your face and I know what you're going to say and _no_ , we cannot keep the cat."

Her mind danced to the _Doctor Who_ comic in which the Doctor had done exactly that, even going so far as to naming the cat Rose. It was the first time she wished she could find out if the comics were canon, but she quickly and efficiently shoved that thought from her mind. A thought process like that could make things happen accidentally, and she wasn't keen to find herself in the middle of a comic book adventure. Especially because it would be pointless, considering that she'd never read even one of the comics or any of the other literature outside of the show, and therefore wouldn't even know that she would be experiencing it, so therefore, her question wouldn't be answered.

(Sometimes, she had to be extra thorough with thought processes that could lead to something like this, because a genuine honest to god stray wondering could lead to the genuine honest to god stray wondering into actually occurring. It had happened one too many times before she'd utilized her the full use of her powers, and she shuddered at the remembrance of what those things were).

"Sorry, what?" she asked, realizing that she'd no idea what he'd just said.

"Anna," he whined, searching her, and she laughed in surprise at his three sixty. "We can't keep a cat aboard, I mean, the wiring alone-"

She swept her hand out, and was more than surprised when the cat protested, curling deeper into her chest.

"Which isn't visible," she pointed out, frowning as she looked down at said cat.

There was something wrong.

She didn't know how to describe what was wrong, but the feelings radiating from the cat were... exceptional.

"Oh, I suppose- No, no, _no_ ," he told her. "We're dropping off said cat at a shelter, and that's final."

She rolled her eyes. It wasn't like she wanted a cat, but he was being rather insistent about the whole thing, and it was starting to irritate her.

Surprise flashed through her, distracting her from her thoughts that her husband wasn't even open to the discussion of doing something like adopting a cat. She realized what was wrong, and she stared down at the cat, something like dread weighing her down.

"Hey, Doc?" she frowned, looking up at the ceiling. "Tor?"

"... Why'd you say my name like that?"

She shrugged, looking back down at the cat, sending reassurance to it. It was so scared. More scared than a cat had any right to be.

"Wanted to call you Doc, don't know why, point is-"

She was surprised when he was suddenly in front of her, and she looked up at him to see the devilish grin on his face.

"You can call me _whatever_ you'd like," he said, leaning down as if he were about to kiss her. He was entirely too entrancing and, despite the fact that there was a cat between them, she started to reach for him. He pulled back suddenly and she found herself pouting, involuntarily though it might've been. "After we drop the cat off at a shelter that will no doubt have a loving home waiting for it."

"Okay, well, W _hatever You'd Like_ -" she teased him.

"I did say _after_ we dropped the cat off," he pointed out, and she laughed a little at that.

"Well, Whatever You'd Like, I'd hate to break it to you, but we're not dropping the cat off."

A burst of emotion went through him at that, and she couldn't decipher them, only that they were negative in every sense of the word, before he turned back to look at her.

"And why is that?" he asked, his emotions smoothing out, as if they were the Tardis that had just broken through a rough time storm and was smoothing out the same.

"Because, Whatever You'd Like," she said, for a final time, "The cat is having human emotions."

Animal emotions and human emotions were different. They weren't more or less complicated. Animal emotions were simply more direct and to the point. Humans tended to skirt around the issue. Animals didn't have to.

This cat was having human emotions. Sad and terrified, but human all the same.

"The cat is what?"

"Having human emotions," she repeated, and she gently cradled the cat before she continued to rub at the spot on its' chest. The cat rolled over into her arms, hiding it's face in the crook of her arm as it continued to shake. "And it's terrified."

"She," the Doctor pointed out, walking to her. "Here, give her to me."

She held it, or her, she supposed, closer to her chest, protectively. "What for?"

"Because you don't like 'manipulating emotions' and if what you're trying to imply is what you're actually implying, then a human has been impossibly turned into a cat and she's probably terrified."

He didn't point out the obvious. That whatever had changed her from a human into a cat probably hadn't done it delicately, and the undue stress of a human inside of a cat's body would probably cause her to die, and soon. That would only be sped along by the stress of being stressed.

It was only for this reason that she reluctantly handed the cat to the Doctor, though it wasn't without a last word in edgewise. "Fine," she said. "But if you take her to a shelter, I'm going to lock you out of the Tardis for a week."

"Haha, I'd like to see you try," he said, apparently unaware that she fully meant it (or being fully willing to fight her on it if she actually did, in which case...). "Hello," he said, as the cat started to squirm in his arms. "No, no, it's all right, sh, calm down, there we are."

It was an instantaneous calming down. She felt herself relax from it, as the cat looked up at him through tired eyes.

"It's all right. I'm the Doctor. Can you tell me your name?"

The cat mrowed tiredly, and he nodded, smiling.

"Emma. That's a wonderful name. Emma, can you tell me the last thing you remember?"

The cat shifted to get more comfortable as she explained her situation, and Anna was pleasantly surprised to hear human English come in the form of her meows. It was sort of complicated to explain, but basically, Anna could understand animals as well. Animals had their own language, which, while not as complex as humans, didn't mean that it wasn't just as complicated. They just spoke in a different way.

But, Emma the cat spoke in the same syntax as human language.

She explained, through a series of meows, that the last thing she remembered was trying to get her camera lens fixed at a shop called, "The Broken Body" about a mile from where she lived and, "Wait, you can understand me," she said, though it wasn't said with any sort of affectation, just a simple realization due to the Doctor manipulating her emotions.

"Yes, I can," he agreed. "And Emma, I promise to help you in every way that I can, and that starts with giving me the address of that shop you were in."

She did just that, and the Doctor nodded, smiling encouragingly.

When Anna had been with the alternate timeline Doctor, she'd likened the way he'd treated her to that of how he treated outsiders. This was how he was treating Emma now. Normally, it was effective. The Doctor, when he acted in that way, was enthralling. The comfort and sureity that he was throwing Emma, it was more than reassuring. It was a definitive outcome that he would fix things, and all would be well, with no room for error.

The only reason it hadn't worked on Anna was because she knew him, and knew who he was, and that meant that sometimes, even he couldn't fix things.

Now would not be one of those things. He would fix it, and all would be well. She had a feeling about it, and she felt reassured.

Even if she had a feeling in the same breath that she wouldn't be able to step in and do anything about it.

#####

They were at The Broken Body nearly five minutes later, Emma secured in his bigger-on-the-inside pockets and happily sleeping (though he'd put her to sleep with her permission, as Anna disapproved of simply knocking people out. Not that he made a habit of it, mind. Sometimes, situations required it).

The point was, they were roaming the store, looking for anything out of place, while the worker behind the counter went to go and get the owner.

"Okay, don't move."

The alarm that he felt coming from Anna was startling, and he quickly stood as still as a statue, glancing at her out of the corner of his eye.

"What is it?" he asked, very quietly.

"The pictures," she said, just as quietly. "The name's underneath." She barely nodded at the name plate beneath a picture of a girl who couldn't be older than a human teenager. "Emma."

"Ah, I see you've noticed my collection of portraits!"

Anna startled, whirling around to look at the person who could only be the owner. He barely frowned at that before he turned to look at the owner, smiling brightly and much more poised than Anna apparently was.

"Lovely pictures," The Doctor praised. "Who're the models, if you don't mind my asking?"

It hit him, suddenly, that Anna was afraid of this man.

He frowned as he realized he'd no idea why. It wasn't just fear, either. Anna was looking at him, wide-eyed with her hands slightly shaking. She was downright terrified of him.

On the surface, he appeared to be an ordinary bloke, close cropped blonde hair with green eyes and a friendly (though fairly overconfident) smile on his face. He looked human.

Anna could pick up on other things that people couldn't, though. If she was worried, perhaps there was reason to be worried.

He set his alarm meter all the way up, treating this as a higher level threat than, in his opinion, he needed to. This meant standing up taller and taking all of the attention off of Anna and onto himself as 'Gavin', the name that was on the friendly nametag, spoke.

"Just local students," he waved them off. "I do headshots for college kids in town, the ones in the drama department? Thought it'd be a good place to showcase my work, for anybody interested in having some photos taken. Are you folks looking to have some pictures taken?"

Anna was desperately reaching for his hand, but it was like she was having trouble moving. He quickly reached out, interlacing their fingers, and it seemed to give her some strength. He pushed some reassurance at her and she accepted it, allowing him to feel how truly shaky she was. He gently pulled her closer as he continued, minutely pushing her behind himself. If Gavin noticed, he didn't comment.

"We're actually interested in one model in particular. Emma?" he tried, raising his eyebrows.

That caught Gavin's interest, though it was in the subtle way that people didn't think that he could see. Meanwhile, Anna's fear only increased, even as she shoved it down as hard as it would go. "What about her?"

The Doctor reached into his pocket and pulled out the psychic, showing it to him. "We're with the local PD. Emma was reported missing recently," he lied, stowing the psychic paper. "We've traced her trail to here as being the last place that she was seen."

Anna's fear was starting to get distracting. It was like she was fighting the urge to run as quickly from this place as she could, the feeling crawling through her skin. He doubted that she was aware the connection was seeking more comfort from him, as this would've been happening subconsciously. That was part of the charm of the connection.

He tried to send her a calming feeling, but she rejected it out of hand, her body so strung up and tense that she was unwilling to calm down in case she needed the adrenaline to get away.

"Well, I'm sorry to hear that," Gavin said, and Anna's stomach twisted with fear and anticipation. "I'm afraid that I haven't seen her since I took her photo, but if there's anything that I can do, officer...?"

He raised his eyebrows before realization crested through him.

"The Doctor, this is Anna-"

Anna's hand tightened unexpectedly in his, but he continued.

"-Monroe. Can you tell us-"

"Well, officers... Doctor? And Monroe-" he interrupted the Doctor, before he nodded at him to continue speaking. The Doctor smiled cordially.

"Can you tell us anything that you remember, anything at all? About how Emma was or if you noticed anybody hanging about outside your shop what might've looked out of place?"

He shrugged. "She seemed fine," he told them, glancing back at Anna, a look of uncertainty folding across his face, no doubt at the look of terror that was plastered across hers. "She'd made an appointment about a week or so before. She was... Actually, yeah, she was an artist, not a drama student," he seemed to remember. "She wanted a professional headshot done so that she could draw a self-portrait. I thought that was cool, actually-"

"No, she wasn't."

Anna's voice was small behind him, and he raised his eyebrows, wanting to glance back at her but not wanting to take Gavin out of his eyeline.

"I'm sorry?" Gavin asked.

"She wasn't an-an artist," she said. "She came to you to get her lens fixed. _Remember?"_

#####

Things happened when Anna didn't follow her feelings. The entire time she'd been speaking, she'd had all of her warning bells going off that she shouldn't be speaking, that it would change everything.

But, as soon as the words had started to leave her mouth, it was like she couldn't stop them.

Normally, it was a bad thing that happened when Anna didn't follow her feelings. This time, she was surprised (but only momentarily) when the feeling that she couldn't change things simply disappeared in response.

She was more than happy to intervene, but was surprised by the result. Before she knew what she was doing, she shot her hand out, turning Gavin into a cat before she put him to sleep.

"Anna?" the Doctor questioned, before she held her hand out demandingly.

"Give me Emma. _Now,"_ she demanded, when he didn't automatically comply the nanosecond after she'd said Emma's name.

"Anna, what're you-"

"Now!" she practically shouted at him, and he held up his hands in a placating manner.

"Anna, just talk to me-"

She didn't comply. Instead, she grabbed him by his coat lapels, slamming him into the wall. It shook him to his core, rattling his teeth, even shaking some of the frames loose from the wall.

"Give. Me-"

The picture frames started talking.

She meant that literally. When she looked down, she saw that some of the picture frames had more desperate looks on their faces, their mouths moving, though no sound came out.

It wasn't hard to guess what they were saying.

 _Help me_.

She released the Doctor, kneeling down in front of the frames.

"I will," she promised. "Just hang on."

Her eyes roamed until she found the one that she was looking for. Emma's frame was also on the floor, but unlike the rest of the photos, Emma's hadn't come to life. She was staring blankly ahead, the eerie smile still resting placidly on her face as she stared lifelessly up at Anna.

#####

In the end, the solution was simple enough.

Gavin had been stealing people, using a camera that he'd found on the street one day. According to the Doctor, it was from the future, and though neither of them had any idea how it had ended up on the street, it wasn't hard to guess. Some wily time traveler had brought the piece of technology back, probably trying to grab a piece of the past to take back with them to the future. It was a transportation device that, when a picture of the object had been taken, could be reanimated at it's final destination.

Gavin hadn't cared about that. He'd just cared about the fact that he'd tried taking pictures and found out that he could capture, quite literally, the subject of the photo. What other choice did he have but to steal women who wandered into his shop?

It wasn't the Doctor's fault that it took some convincing for her to turn Gavin back from a cat into a human being, nor was it his fault that he realized that Anna's intervention was also the reason Emma's picture didn't move. When Gavin had tried to steal Emma, Anna had intervened and grabbed her consciousness, putting her into the body of a cat and putting her right into the path of where they were headed that day, which had been a random destination that they'd set.

Of course, she'd had to go back in time to do so, which meant separating from the Doctor, who was less than ecstatic to let her do so.

It also wasn't his fault that he didn't get much say in the matter.

When she teleported back, she teleported into the Tardis. Emma was already home safe and sound and very grateful to be there (or so she assumed. That had been the Doctor's job, dropping Emma off. She easily imagined the conversation that had taken place, because she'd seen conversations like it on the television show), so, it was just the two of them.

"So," he started, conversationally as she stood somewhere between the door and the console, the empty room spanning between them. "You got physical with me today."

Shame burned into her gut at the vivid memory of slamming him into the wall. She suddenly couldn't meet his eyes.

"I'm sorry," she apologized, quietly.

"Oh, no, it's fine. I mean, it isn't, but I do forgive you. I'd just like to know the reason that you were so agitated in the first place, considering that Gavin was nothing more than your garden variety pervert."

Despite the fact that she would've laughed, she couldn't. She bit her lip and looked down at the ground, barely shaking as memories tossed through her mind.

"But you were terrified of him," the Doctor pointed out. "Still are, if the fact that your hands are shaking and the emotions that you're feeling are any indication. Why-"

He started, before he stopped, realization of the wrong kind cresting through him.

"Did you... already know what he was doing? Trapping women in frames? And it reminded you of... feeling trapped, with your mum?"

She raised her eyebrows before she barely shook her head, letting out a shaky breath.

"There was... a boy, in high school, and he..." she blew out the words in a breath. "Bullied me."

Confusion tinged through him before a fierce protectiveness of her washed through him at the realization of her words and what they meant.

"Oh?" he asked.

She barely nodded.

"He, um..." she used a shaking hand to brush hair out of her face. "He used to corner me against lockers and taunt me, or he would say passive aggressive things to me in the hallway, and he... he shoved me, a few times."

She remembered that terror she'd felt, when he'd corner her against the lockers when the hallways had already emptied out and nobody was around. She'd had no say about getting to school earlier. She lived nearly a half hour from where she went to school and took the bus. It wasn't until her senior year of high school that Gavin graduated and she was free of him, though that didn't stop him ramping up the treatment during _his_ senior year, tormenting her far more often than he had. She remembered not only him cornering her, but the passive aggressive comments he'd shout at her from the hallways or the times he'd shoved her 'accidentally', even apologizing for it so that the times she did have witnesses, he could play it off before he winked at her, that knowing, power hungry little smirk resting on his face all the while.

"And that was... that was him," she said, though the words were constricted by the emotion she felt. "He looked... Everything about him was the same. Even his... even his name was the same, and I just..."

Even being an all-powerful being didn't stop the fear and anxiety, which were still rampant. Something in her still remembered it, very clearly, to the point that she would feel the same emotions, even now, when faced with a person who looked exactly like someone who had just been a boy, exerting what little power he had over a helpless teenage girl, just because he knew he could get away with it.

"He can't hurt you anymore."

"No, Doctor, I know-"

"Anna, you don't."

She felt surprise as she suddenly felt his emotions past her own. She looked up at him to see the same fierceness reflecting in his eyes that she could feel coming from him, and she barely raised her eyebrows as he tried to show her both how serious and how protective (and territorial, some part of her thought).

"He will never touch you again, not so long as you live, and if there was a way that I could head back to protect you from him, I would, I swear it, I would." He started towards her, his hands clasped behind his back, but she wasn't afraid as she might've been before, not even with the reminder of what had been done to her so close to her. "I promise you, Anna, you're safe with me, and that will be true until the end of time."

It was a promise he couldn't keep, and she knew that, even if he wanted so desperately to believe that it was true. It was just his life, and more than that, it was life in general. Safety was never guaranteed.

But, that wasn't the point. The fact that he was promising it, the fact that he was so intent on trying, was what counted.

Besides which, there was something else that she'd noticed. Most people would've asked why she hadn't told somebody, why she hadn't tried to stop it. She thought that maybe he hadn't because he understood what her answer would've been. That she thought it was normal behavior. That it was something she had to suffer as a byproduct of life, because of what she'd suffered through what her mother did to her on an hourly, and sometimes even minute-by-minute, basis.

So, instead, he'd tried to turn her towards the future, and the promise that he would strive to help her, no matter what.

Something released in her chest and she knew that it was time.

It was time to tell him the truth, about what happened in Vegas, about all of it.

This time, she would be ready.


	4. Chapter Four

"Doctor, we've to talk."

"What about?" he asked. He could feel her rampant emotions through their connection, and judging by what he was feeling, he could tell that they were about to delve into who Stephen really was (and after three weeks of radio silence on the matter, he was more than thrilled to finally be getting answers). He had no idea what had done it, but he didn't think too hard on this, especially not when her next sentence came.

"What happened in Vegas."

He furrowed his brows, but he didn't even get to open his mouth (not even to make the joke that was strangely on the tip of his tongue, what humans always said about what happens in Vegas). In the next moment, the Tardis lurched them off to the side. There was nothing to hang onto, which was a design flaw that the Doctor now understood better. His console room had started off like this, empty with nothing to grab onto, save for the console. As time wore on, there had been more things to grab onto. He'd thought this had been the evolution of his Tardis, somehow symbolically showing the growth that both he and the machine had undertaken.

Now, he understood that, even if it was also for that reason, it wasn't the only reason. Both he and Anna were tossed mercilessly off to the side. He saw Anna crashing into the wall, head first, her shoulder crumpling against it in slow motion, and he just managed to propel himself forward to grab her so that, the next time they were flung off to the other side of the room, he was able to cradle her when they crashed into the wall, once again nowhere near the console.

The third time they lurched, his shoulder pounding in a rhythmic pain that was unusual for him, he managed to reach out and grab the console before it slid past them, and he cradled Anna in his arms, even as he heard her steady breathing. He could smell the tang of blood in her hair, but knew from experience that the injury was already healing.

He said a small curse word when he realized that she was unconscious, knowing that it would be harder than he'd like for it to be to pilot the Tardis due to the turbulent nature of their ride. He quickly stood them both up, grabbing onto the first thing he could find, which managed to jerk them off to the side before he pushed the next three buttons he needed to in quick succession. It didn't steady them out entirely, but it did manage to make them even out enough that he could steady Anna, laying her more confidently on the floor, and steady the Tardis in the process.

In the next moment, he found that the Tardis landed with a thud that was so jarring his teeth clacked together painfully (for the second time that day). A moment later, they settled.

For a moment, it was just the sound of his ragged breathing and her steady one.

In the next moment, the silence was broken by the sound of her groan.

"Ow," she managed to get out.

"You all right?" he asked her, not kneeling down next to her as he wanted to. He had to ascertain where they had landed, what with a flight as violent as that. He frowned at the readings, confusion running through him. The monitor read that they were in the Paris Catacombs, 21st century. Satisfied that they were at least somewhere stable, he knelt down next to Anna, searching her.

"Ow," she repeated, rubbing at her head before she frowned, taking her hand away to find the blood that resided there. "Seriously, what is it with you and head injuries?" she asked, perturbed in a way that would've been funny if she weren't bleeding so profusely.

"You're the one with the head injury, dear, not me."

"Yes, dear," she shot back at him. "But my penchant to get head injuries went up about, ooh, say, two hundred percent after I met you? Ow," she groused again, before her eyes lit up. "Oh, wait."

The blood disappeared a moment later, the injury having long since healed, and she smiled up at him.

"Okay, where are we-"

She'd reached her hand up to grab the console, but he put his hand out flat to stop her (as opposed to grabbing her wrist to do so, which he was looking at in a whole new light. Anna was known for downplaying the bad. He couldn't help but wonder what else this... Gavin boy had done to her during their, however brief, time in school). She looked at him questioningly, and he nodded at her hand.

"Forgot about the blood," he said, before he quickly stood, not seeing if she disappeared that as well.

"Oh," she replied, before, moments later, he heard her move to a standing position.

He started towards the monitor, already having run the scans to see what had pulled them off course. Of course, it would be in that moment when the Tardis door had a mind of their own, popping open.

From what he could see, there were skulls lining the walls. An eerie feeling filled him, but it wasn't his feeling. It was the feeling he was getting from Anna in the connection that they shared. Much to his surprise, he felt it propel her forward.

"Anna?" he questioned.

Anna, in the meantime, was too busy having her focus taken up by that eerie feeling, ignoring her husband even as he reached out to clutch her arm.

"Anna, what're you-"

"I've to see."

She did. There was a macabre fascination creeping through her now, wanting to see what was outside of those doors but knowing that nothing good would come of it (even if no part of her cared).

She heard the Doctor's careful steps following her out, the sensation increasing the more she walked out into it.

In the distance, she thought she could hear singing.

As soon as she took three steps out, the Doctor had managed to step out as well. "Looks like the monitors were right," he murmured. "It's the Paris catacombs."

She knew a vague history of it, had even seen a movie about it called, As Above, So Below. It was part of the reason she was even able to put into terms that people could understand about her abilities (even if it wasn't entirely accurate, but she refused to explain it and then say, "except it's nothing like that, but if it helps." Who was she, Bowtie?).

"I-"

There was no coherent way to describe what happened next. Despite the fact that Anna didn't believe that good and evil existed in the universe naturally, only that human observation made it so, there was no other way to describe what rushed at her as anything but a great evil, intent on doing her the ultimate harm. Terror choked her and filled her as it rushed at her, a terrible scream following in it's wake.

What happened next was entirely out of her control.

The entire world went black as those horrible screams filled her ears.

When her eyes opened next, her head pounded with pain. But, she wasn't focused on that.

Instead, she was focused on the face of the tenth Doctor sitting above her, the face of Rose Tyler to the left of him.

#####

His first clue that there would be something off about this adventure was that the Tardis didn't want to land. She hardly ever did that, genuinely not wanting to land somewhere and almost feeling sick because of it.

But, he didn't believe that anything was actually wrong until he saw an impossible face with her eyes closed, laying prone on the floor with blood pouring from her nose.

"Anna."

The name dropped from his lips, and for a moment, he forgot about everything that had happened between them. He forgot that she'd abandoned him in favor of searching out greater adventures in the universe without so much as a by-your-leave, allowing him to think that she was dead or worse for thirty years (and quite a bit longer than that, considering how much time had passed). All that he could see when he looked upon her obviously injured face was Anna, the woman that he'd loved (very firmly in the past tense category).

He quickly kneeled down next to her, pulling out his sonic.

"But who is she?" he heard Rose ask from behind his shoulder, and he glanced back at her as the sonic processed the readings.

"She's Anna," he said. "She's a woman that I used to travel with."

He wanted to snort at himself but held himself back. As if his relationship to Anna had ever been that simple.

He swallowed the lump in his throat.

"She's also the woman who saved Gallifrey," he told Rose, before he looked at the sonic.

She'd had a massive drain on her energy, which would account for the bloody nose and the unconscious state she'd apparently fallen into.

A horrifying thought crossed his mind and he fell back.

What if he'd been right about what the angels had been doing to her? What if she had been tortured, mercilessly so, and he'd just given up because he'd assumed that a woman like her could never want to be with a man like him in the long term? It had been, what, nearly a century since he'd last seen her?

What if she'd been getting tortured for a century and had only just now managed to escape?

He swallowed back the lump in his throat, but was spared from any more horrifying thought processes when Anna's eyes opened. He tried for a smile that sat wrongly on his face.

"Hello," he said. "Try not to move too much, you're all right, you're safe."

She frowned at him, though her eyes had flicked briefly back to Rose, who was sitting behind him.

Guilt weighed heavily on his hearts (though to be honest, when didn't it these days? He was so old and his hands so full of blood and there was only so much that a person as perfect as Rose (and even a person as wonderful as Anna) could fix). He smiled reassuringly at Anna, nodding before he went to pick her up.

"I'm- we're taking you back to the Tardis now, this is Rose, you're all right."

She shied away from him, wiping away at the blood underneath her nose. It was an absentminded gesture, and he knew this because she looked surprised before she looked down at the blood on her hand. She blinked at it before she spoke. "Oh," she said, before she looked up at him. "What's happening?"

"Welcome to hell," Rose whispered, quietly, the words lilting with her accent, and he frowned hard, looking back at her to see that she wasn't looking at him, looking at the wall over his shoulder. He looked back to see the words written on the wall, along with text that was very strange, for the simple fact that the words weren't translating for him.

"Doctor?"

He didn't get a chance to answer her question. The door opened behind him and he immediately stood, whirling around to see the people that had entered.

They were wearing a blue uniform and had tentacles spilling out where their mouths would be, if they were human. One of the tentacles appeared to have been installed, a mechanical thing led that to the orbs in their hands, which lit up.

"Ah, hello, yes," he said, panic slamming through his ribcage at the fact that he might not be able to get Anna back to the Tardis right away. "I'm-"

"We need to feed."

He turned his head to the side, his eyes wide. "Sorry, what?"

"We need to feed," they repeated, and he glanced between Anna and Rose.

"Ah, ood!"

He was surprised when Anna spoke, but was even more surprised when he heard Rose speaking, saying, "Woah, mate." He turned back to see that Rose was partially supporting Anna, and he started to reach out for her as well.

"Love a good ood," she said, as he supported her other side. She frowned in concentration. "That should rhyme better, why does my head hurt so-"

And then proceeded to promptly pass out, Rose and him supporting her between them.

Oh, except, she hadn't passed out, not entirely. She was looking up at the ood through her lashes, breathing raggedly, though she was happily being held up by the two of them.

"Happening?"

"They need to feed, apparently," the Doctor said.

"Us," she said, and Rose quickly agreed.

"Seems that way, yeah," she said, and they both backed up, an arm each thrown over their shoulders. "Okay, plan?"

"Try not to get eaten?" he threw out, glancing around at the ood.

"Yeah, that's brilliant," Rose agreed sarcastically, casting a furtive glance around the room for what he could only assume was a weapon of defense. If it came down to it, Rose was good in a scrap, and what a good word that was, scrap, because that's all that it would be, it would be a scrap and that would be it, because it was literally three against twenty, and that was being generous, because Anna was a useless lump held between them so it was more like two against twenty and those weren't great odds but he'd faced worse-

He was surprised to find that the ood tapped the ball in it's hand. "You," it said. "If you are hungry."

"See?" Anna said, weakly, but the Doctor ignored her.

"Sorry?" he questioned.

"We apologize. Electromagnetics have interfered with our systems. Would you like some refreshment?"

It was with that refreshing question that Anna actually did pass out between them, Rose unable to support her weight as she fell neatly into the space between them.

#####

"And that man who just left, that was Toby Zed, Archeaeology, and this is Scooti Manista, Trainee maintenance. And this? This is-"

Anna shot up suddenly, not unlike a puppet on strings. She managed to cast a furtive glance around before the Doctor even managed to catch her. She leaned heavily against him, barely shaking her head.

"Scooti?" she asked, but she didn't give the trainee maintenance a chance to respond. "Under no circumstances are you to leave this room, am I making myself exceptionally-"

She groaned before she leaned heavily against him once more.

He was surprised at the feelings radiating from her. He couldn't distinctly remember ever feeling emotions coming from her before, though those were the days right after the War and he couldn't say he could feel much of anything during that point in time. It had just started to ease up right after she'd gone... missing.

He felt a flash of resentment wafting through him before he remembered the awful truth, that she hadn't abandoned him. He was startled to realize that it had, in fact, been the other way around.

He held her tighter to him, even as Rose, ever the worrier and carer, rushed to her other side, about to hold her up as well.

Anna only had eyes for him, even as she felt Rose on her other side, that dried blood still caked underneath her nose, considering they hadn't had a chance to clean it.

"I'm sorry," she said, quietly, and he quickly rushed to reassure her that she had nothing to be sorry for, but she cut him off. "I'm about to do something that'll drain my energy, and that'll mean that I can't get back to a future you. I might..."

Realization thundered through her eyes so fiercely that it startled him, and she turned to glance back at Rose as an almost unconscious thought, before she turned back to look at him.

"I might change time, right here, right now, but I can save all of these people. I will save all of these people."

She drew herself away from him, though there was no small amount of regret lingering in her eyes.

"I'm sorry."

It was over, just like that. He suddenly found himself back on the Tardis, the crew laying sleeping on the grating.

"What's happening?" Rose asked, sounding as dazed as he felt.

"I don't- Anna!"

Anna was writhing on the ground in pain, and he immediately knelt down by her side. "Hey-"

But, Anna did as she had done most of this trip and cut him off.

"Fly, fly, you have to- fly us away from here, now, please-"

As if to punctuate her point, the Tardis gave an almighty shake before she started to tilt.

The Doctor was a blur of motion, then, piloting them as fast as he could from what was apparently a black hole (according to the readings he'd taken). He dashed around the console, running about as quickly as he could to pilot them to safety. Anna whimpered and he dashed over to her next.

"Ro... Rocket, out..."

"Anna, sh, don't try to-"

"Rocket," she said, more insistently, before she passed clean out to the grating below.

#####

Anna had no idea what had happened in the catacombs.

It had drained her of a large amount of her energy, as well as somehow sent her back to the days when the Doctor was traveling with Rose. She'd intended to simply pop away as soon as she could, but then there had been the small matter of being able to save everyone (with the exception of Toby, who was never meant to live in any version of reality, something else that was so rare Anna could count the number of times on one hand that it had happened- well. Two. A handful?) The point was, everybody but Toby lived.

It also meant that she'd drained herself of so much of her energy that she would be stranded in the past exactly where she had never meant to be.

Here was the problem: Using the 'it doesn't take any energy' trick was still strictly for emergencies. She still had no idea how it affected the fabric of the universe when it wasn't her universe, and trying to figure that out now was a bad idea. She wouldn't use the 'it doesn't take any energy' trick because she still had other options. The Doctor could just erase his memories of her being there so that when she appeared on the Tardis in a few years time, he'd have no memory of her or the fact that she'd come back to him.

The other thing was that she was almost positive that this was how things had went down anyway, for the simple fact that, if it had, Rose's behavior at Journey's End would make a lot more sense. She hadn't had any vitriol or anger towards Anna... and maybe that was because she'd met Anna before. Maybe she'd even traveled with her.

She'd already started to come up with excuses (read here as lies) to tell Rose about where she was in the future (sticking with something vague would do), but in the meantime, she'd turned back to the Doctor and apologized to him, because it meant that she was stuck in the past with both of them until she'd gotten her energy back, enough so that she could travel back to her Doctor (which was also another reason she wasn't using the 'it doesn't takes any energy' trick, because what the hell had that been in the catacombs? Whatever it was, she needed to be back up to full power to stop it, lest it hurt her Doctor in the process).

When she awoke, she was sitting in the medbay, staring up at the ceiling and feeling absolute shit. She turned her sore... everything to look at the Doctor and see the worried look resting on his face.

"Hey, there she is," he said, a smile encompassing his face. It was in that moment that she realized that he was holding her hand. "How're you feeling?"

She barely shrugged before she groaned, turning back to the ceiling. "Moving is hard," she complained, and he gave a barely there laugh, though the relief between them was palpable.

Out of habit, she went to heal her soreness before that caused the ache in her chest to intensify beyond what was comfortable, and she barely cried out before she managed to calm her rapid breathing.

"Yeah, best-best try not to... well, do anything, really," he considered.

It hit her then, as it had on the train, that this was the Doctor that she would never see again. She had to resist the urge to reach out and smash her lips onto his.

He was gone, but he was sitting right in front of her, and it was as terrifying as it was exhilarating.

Unaware of her random urge to kiss her not-yet husband, he ruffled his hair before he continued on. "You're considerably drained on energy, which, you said you would be, so good on you for the heads up. Didn't really give me a heads up about the whole 'skin peeling from your body' bit, but I figured it out, in the end, always do, top marks for me-"

"You're rambling," she pointed out, wanting to reach out and hold him, fighting back tears.

The Doctor was always the Doctor, but seeing past versions of him was like seeing a ghost. Every version of himself was unique in their own right. Although he was still the Doctor... He would never be Leather Jacket and he would never be Pinstripes again. Just as he would one day never be Curly Haired (because calling him Stephen when he wasn't felt wrong) or Bowtie again.

It was as strange as it was wonderful, because her husband survived, and although it was always sad, the story continued on in some form.

"I am, yeah, yeah," he agreed, running his fingers through his hair before he cleared his throat, nodding down at her left hand. "It just appears that you've gotten married since the last time I saw you. Bit distracting, cause I thought-"

Oh, dammit.

Trust the all-powerful being to be bad about spoilers. She bit back the... everything as he continued.

"-the angels had you and they'd been mercilessly torturing you and that's why you didn't come back to me-"

"They were," she agreed.

She couldn't describe what his hearts did, then, both sinking and rising, all at the same time. The guilt between them was palpable, though, clear as day on his face.

"Anna, I am... So sorry," he said. "More than you can know, I-" he shook his head, looking down and away.

She might've interrupted him, but right now, she was scrambling for a cover story that would make this whole thing make sense.

"-thought..." he shook his head, looking up at her. "I'm a daft, thick old man. I'm sorry," he repeated. "I spent thirty years searching for you, and I-"

He was her husband. She couldn't not tell him. Besides which, he'd have to erase the whole thing from his memory, anyway. What was the harm in telling him now?

"I know," she said, quietly, before she bit her lip at the look on his face, gently twisting the ring on her finger. "The angels... they had me for a few hours at most."

A look crossed his face like it would've been better if she'd physically struck him.

"When I managed to escape them, I didn't aim for you. I aimed for a Tardis. I... ended up..." She looked down at the ring on her left hand. "In your future. Well, it's the past for me, really, at this point, because of the whole-"

"I don't understand," he said, quietly, and she felt his hand hovering above her forearm, wanting to stop her from speaking, but apparently not wanting to touch her.

"I know," she said, about to speak once more before he bowled over her.

"You... are with me, in the future?"

"Yes," she said, and she felt a thrill of something run through her after she'd felt the emotion rushing in the air between them, because she realized too late that he meant _with me_ in that sense.

"So, we got..."

It was a strange mix of grief and a soured, tiny, downplayed bit of happiness that ran through him, though that was pushed as far away as it could be. He cleared his throat.

"Married, then," he said, shifting as she assumed he sat up, but she couldn't look at him. "What about Rose, then? I just tossed her aside like she was so much trash, the moment that you came back to my doorstep?"

She furrowed her brow. "Is that what you did just now?"

"What're you on about?" he snapped at her, and she barely flinched, but he was already standing by that time. She glanced over at him to see that his back was turned to her, his hands in his pockets.

"Just now. Did you toss Rose aside and get down on one knee and propose?"

"Course I didn't," he said, in a tone that suggested she were stupid.

She would've said she didn't know what ran through her, but she did. It was a year spent with a man who unconditionally loved her, and having that love transfer from one body to the next. It was the memory of how he'd reacted when she'd told him about that awful boy, swearing he'd protect her even from the likes of something as harmless to her in the state she was in now as a teenage boy.

It was finally having the respect to stand up and speak to him in a way she'd deserved from the beginning.

"Stop it," she said, despite the fact that her head was pounding and standing was an effort.

"Stop what?" he asked, whirling around on her, surprise reflecting in his eyes that she was standing at all.

"I let you talk to me like this once before, but I won't do it again. I deserve more respect than this, so just because you're feeling sorry for yourself, it doesn't mean you get to take that out on me."

He looked like he wanted to argue the point. After a moment, he didn't, simply searching her, waiting for whatever it was that she was about to say.

"I am sorry that you got this unwanted glimpse into the future, and I'm even more sorry for what that means, for the both of you. I can't stop what's to come to pass, even if every fiber of my being might want to-"

"Do you?"

Ice passed through her, but instead of freezing her, it turned her angry.

"Do I what?" she snapped at him.

He looked at her with a careful laziness resting about him. "Do you want to stop what's to come to pass? Because I'm pretty sure that you could, Anna, given half the chance. You're the most powerful woman-"

"I'm the most powerful woman in all of creation and saving whomstever the hell I please makes me something like the Trickster." He barely startled at that, though realization seemed to draw through him. He let out a hopeless breath, searching her. "I will not save whoever you please just so that you can hurt a little bit less because, as it turns out, everybody's lives don't revolve around your own."

"I'm not saying that," he said.

"So what are you saying? Because it sounds like you're asking me to rewrite time so that you don't have to lose the woman that you love-"

"I already did that, remember?" he asked her, and his eyes were wild. "I lost you to the angels and instead of coming back to me, you chose to, what, kip with my future self so you could burrow yourself into my hearts, again, and break them just the same?"

Anna had had a day. She'd stranded herself here so that she could save a handful of people and ood, and now, she had to deal with an angry Ten who couldn't seem to make up his mind about what he was angry about?

Anna rarely shouted. It's why TenToo was so surprised, that day on the beach, when she did.

But, right now, she began to shout at him, her lungs burning in the process.

"You don't get to be mad at me for not rewriting time and then get mad at me because I did! That's just not how it fucking works!"

"What are you talking about?"

"I'm talking about the fact that, when I get back, you and I have a fight the size of which I have not seen, it is so bad that you ask me to undo it, and not to mention that it's all because I nearly royally screwed your chances at traveling with Rose, by doing it in the first place, and now, you want to come at me like I'm some-some child, like I don't- like I don't- urgh," she said, before she sat down on the bed, her energy already drained. "You're the worst," she informed him, rubbing at the spot in her chest.

"Undoing-"

She felt emotion flare between them and she turned off to the side, squeezing her eyes shut as she barely shook her head.

"I don't have the energy for this fight right now, so just-"

"I asked you to undo what you'd done."

His voice was incredibly small and she let out a breath, barely shaking her head.

"Yes," she told him. "Because you were so furious with me for nearly ruining your chances with Rose-"

"Oh, you're an idiot."

If she were a person who got physical with people, now would be one of those moments. As it was, even looking at him was almost more energy than she had. Her ire fueled her.

"Say that again," she told him, quietly, even despite the look on his face, like he'd been dipped in ice.

"No, but don't you get it, don't you see?" he asked, barely shaking his head. "I only did that because you told me that I did-"

"You had your memories fucking erased, you tosser, just-"

"No, but-but, Anna, you don't understand," he said, pointing at his own head before he illustrated with his hands. "You telling me just _solidified_ the timeline, like-like- so even if I wanted to-"

She frowned, searching him.

"What does that even _mean_?" she asked him.

"It means that, when the times comes, I have to tell you to undo it, and apparently it'll be under the guise of you nearly messing up the chances of my traveling with Rose, which doesn't even make _sense_. I'd already traveled with Rose. Why the _hell-_ "

"What do you mean, already?"

Anna felt her heart dropping out of her chest and straight down to the medbay floor. She turned to look back at the blonde standing in the doorway.

"Rose-" he started, but Rose, who was paling quicker than was probably healthy, continued.

"You're talking like it's past tense," she pointed out, in a small voice.

Anna, who's heart had just been dropped to the medbay floor, was suddenly thundering in her chest.

All of Anna's plans to dance around her questions had just been tossed out the window. Rose knew, now, and she would remember and she would know that there was a clock on their time together. She quickly took off the wedding ring, hoping that Rose was too preoccupied with the Doctor to see, and slipped it into the jeans that they hadn't changed her out of.

"I thought I told you-" the Doctor started weakly.

"To stay in the console room? Yeah, got a bit concerned when I heard the shouting match. You two could rival anybody on the Estate, I swear," she told them both, before she got quickly back to the topic at hand, apparently unaware that Anna's heart might burst from her ribcage at any moment (though thankfully not literally). "Where am I?" Rose asked. "In the future, the one you've just come from, where am I?"

Why did Anna feel like she wanted to cry? Why were tears lining the bottom of her eyes? She ignored this, barely shaking her head, clenching her shaking fists in her lap (already feeling the loss of the wedding ring on her left hand).

"Happy," she told her, honestly. "More happy than you can know-"

"But I'm not traveling with him anymore," she said.

"Rose, she can't-"

"She just did!" Rose shouted at him. "She just basically said that it's the two of you, and where am I? Just... left out in the cold, like Sarah Jane, like all the others?"

"I already said that would never happen," he said, with such fierce determination that, even as someone from his future, she believed him.

Except, Rose didn't, barely shaking her head as she pointed to Anna. "But it already has."

"It doesn't have to."

Anna would never know why she spoke, but emotions swelled within her and through her. As soon as the two were looking at her, she cleared her throat and nodded.

"I can rewrite time," she told them, looking up at them through her lashes. Tears were forming, but she was so exhausted, and she was tired of fighting the inevitable. At the look on his face, she nodded. "Maybe that's what I'm doing here. I've no idea how I ended up here, but maybe that's why I've come back, so that I can come back to the point where it happened and fix it so that you and Rose never parted ways." she shrugged. "Maybe that's what I'm doing here," she repeated.

"But how? I don't... understand," Rose said.

She shrugged. "I'm an all-powerful being," she simply said, and Rose looked at her with surprise written on her face, though disbelief wasn't far behind. "I'm a bit low on power right now, but once I'm back up to it, I can fix what went wrong."

_No matter how much it'll hurt me in the process._

If she had more energy, she might've been able to hold the emotions at bay. She might've been able to do a lot of things, like sit up and look Rose in the eye and be strong as she said her next sentence.

She could do neither of these things as she turned to the left and began to sob, speaking through her sobs.

"If that's what you want then I'll-I'll do it," she told them, before she put her head in her hands and began to weep in earnest.

For a long moment, nobody said anything or did anything. Her sobs were so loud that she didn't hear anybody moving to her, but she did startle when she felt arms on either side of her.

"Hey, hey."

She was even more surprised when she looked up to see the face of an uncertain Rose sitting in front of her. She searched her eyes.

"We'll figure this out, all right? Come here."

In that moment, she understood better than she ever did why the Doctor loved Rose. Even knowing that there was a possibility that Rose might have to give up the life that she'd always dreamt of, she still pulled the woman who would do the taking into her arms, holding her while she sobbed all the tears she hadn't shed in what felt like her entire life.

"We'll figure this out," Rose repeated.

Anna wanted so desperately to believe her.

The feelings coming from behind Rose signified that the Doctor didn't, but she did not care.

She just clutched onto Rose tighter.

#####

"You made a promise to Rose that you can't keep."

Rose had left to go make a cuppa, declaring that 'a good cuppa solves everything, how do you take yours?' and when Anna gave the first reply that came out of her mouth, Rose, satisfied, went to the kitchen to do so.

It left her alone with the Doctor, who was not so much the Doctor as something nearer to the Oncoming Storm.

Whether the emotions that Anna had purged from her body in the form of an hour long crying session or the thought of a Doctor in the future who loved her unconditionally gave her strength, she'd never know. Instead, she looked up at the Doctor with a fierce look on her face.

"If you want to have this conversation with me, you will do it with the-"

She'd no idea why early 10 was such a prat. Except, she did. He loved Rose with everything he was, and he was nearing a millennia (or so he liked to pretend he was). He'd lost so much and the thought of losing her, his Rose...

But that didn't excuse his behavior, or the fact that he took three steps towards her, rage following him in his wake.

"We _will_ have this conversation-"

"-then you will do it by showing me the respect that I fucking deserve!" she shouted at him. Something in both of them barely glanced back, hoping that Rose wouldn't once again come running. That had something to do with the Tardis, both of them separately but unknowingly realized at the same time. She'd wanted them to stop fighting.

The Doctor didn't care, but Anna did. She wouldn't start shouting unless she had to, she resolved (and if time ships could face palm, the Tardis did just that).

"You just lied to the woman that I love and told her that she'd get something she can never have," he hissed at her. "How would you _like_ me to be treating you?"

It wasn't something that her mother had done, but the words were so close to the same vein that she didn't even pause to think. She just shot him a look before she stood, starting to make her way out of the medbay.

He blocked her path. "And just where do you think you're going, hm?"

She was suddenly fifteen again, being cornered by Gavin against the lockers, his words ringing in her ears. It wouldn't have even crossed her mind except she was so close to the reminder of what had happened that it was an automatic reaction. Terror, actual ice cold terror, filled her veins, and she looked up at the Doctor. She was so deep into her trauma that there was an actual pleading look on her face for him to just let her get out of this room, to move aside, dear _goodness please don't hurt her._

(Although Anna wouldn't know it, it would be a look that would reverberate through all of his future selves so that, at least once a life for the rest of his lives, he would remember this moment and shudder, intensely hating himself for a single moment before the emotion burned away like a star burning out, resolving to apologize to an Anna who was very confused but accepting of it).

It took this Doctor aback, searching her as if he didn't understand how she thought for even an iota of a moment he'd do something like physically hurt her-

Everything fell out of him and suddenly it was him who couldn't swallow past the dryness in his mouth.

Anna had been emotionally abused.

It had been so long and he'd been so wildly angry that he forgot she couldn't take his rage as if she were an all-powerful being. Apparently, enough time hadn't passed, and his future self hadn't been kind enough to her (and she still hadn't worked through her trauma, truth be told, because no amount of kindness would work as well as something like therapy for humans) that she still reacted with those some reactions, looking up at him, terrified.

It shocked him to his core when he remembered what else she'd said, about him asking her to undo it. Because that had to have been traumatic on it's own (and why hadn't she? Some part of him wondered)-

He frowned. For a long moment, he stared down at her.

"I asked you to undo it."

The words dropped from his mouth before he'd had a chance to stop them from doing so. A wide-eyed look crossed her face and Anna paled before she barely took two steps back, her arm barely raised as if she expected him to strike her. He couldn't move. He didn't dare, except to barely tilt his head to the side.

"Is that what you're doing here?" he asked her, softly, though he was a complete blank canvas otherwise. "Because I asked you to undo it and you're here back in time, trying to figure out what's wrong so that you can manipulate events so that I never ask you to undo it?"

A new sort of realization sparked through him.

"Or are you trying to solidify that I did travel with Rose, so that when you do travel back to the future me-" he frowned. "But that can't be it, because I married you..." he tilted his head to the other side. "What happened?"

Something shifted in Anna. She swallowed (making a small noise of terror in the back of her throat when she did), before she stood up tall, shaking, curling her hands into fists as she nodded past him.

"I'm walking to my room, now," she told him, though she couldn't completely conceal the tone of terror in her voice. "If you have ever cared about me, you will let me do that, unimpeded. Am I making myself clear?"

He immediately pushed himself out of her way, taking careful steps backwards with his hands held slightly aloft to show he wasn't a threat. He watched as Anna walked past him, before she startled back at the person in the doorway.

"Oh. Rose."

Her voice was still a little bit shaky, and she glanced nervously at the Doctor, barely licking her lips, before she looked back at Rose.

"I'm-I'm heading to my room now. To-to get some sleep, I'll-"

"I thought you weren't supposed to be up and about," Rose said.

"Fine, I'm fine, I need you to move, now," she said, and her voice carried a tone of urgency that Rose immediately reacted to.

She moved out of the way, but he still heard her ask, "What's wrong?"

She'd barely finished her sentiment before Anna quickly moved, running as fast as she could (which, considering her state was both slower than normal but faster than it had any right to be).

Rose, in the meantime, peeked her head into the room.

"What was that about?"

He just sighed, looking away.

#####

Anna woke up in an unfamiliar room.

It wasn't that it was unfamiliar, per say. It was just a room she hadn't really been in since her and the Doctor started sharing a room, some four or five years prior (had it really been so little time?). They hadn't initially shared a room, and it had taken about five or six months for that to change. When it did, she would find herself stopping by here simply to deposit trinkets or knick knacks they'd picked up from local markets, or souvenirs here and there. Then she'd come back from the torture of the angels to find that he'd fallen out of love with her, so she'd spent the next year sleeping in here. When she'd come back from the beach, she'd once again found them sharing a room, only stopping by here to deposit trinkets or to visit memory lane (and sometimes, they curled up in here to watch a movie together, falling asleep on a bed that was infinitely less comfortable than theirs was, but was hers all the same).

She hadn't expected to fall asleep, though, the storm of emotions still brewing as fiercely as they had before. She'd ended up just coming in here, falling onto her bed, and falling asleep as soon as her head had hit the pillow.

She stretched, surprised to find that there was a cracking in her joints before a knock on her door startled her.

"Anna? It's me. Just wanted to check and see if you were okay."

It was the Doctor, sounding like he had a much more reasonable voice on than he did prior. She raised her eyebrows, sat up now and curling her arms around her legs. She called out to him to come in before he did, opening the door, though there was blatant surprise on his face.

"Like I said, just wanted to make sure you were okay," he repeated, his hands barely held aloft (one of them was. The other was currently holding the doorknob, as if he wanted to bolt, though his emotions said it was because he wanted her to feel safe, and she softened at that). "Haven't heard from you in a few hours and I know you're still recovering, so..."

His eyes drifted down to the ring sitting on her left hand (which she didn't remember putting back on, but was happy to find that it was) and he cleared his throat before he looked back up at her, though there wasn't any malice, only a bitter undertone and a sad undercurrent in his eyes.

"I want to talk about what happened," she told him. Surprise lit up his eyes before he nodded, nodding back to the medbay in the same measure.

"I do as well," he said. "I'll meet you in the medbay?"

She felt confusion trailing through her. "Or we can just do it here?"

Surprise ran through his eyes for the second time. "Oh," he said. "I just... didn't want you to feel uncomfortable, I suppose. Yeah, if you're up for it, we can talk here," he agreed, and she barely nodded.

"I wasn't-"

"I-" they both started, as he started into the room. He searched her before he continued. "I'm sorry, about how I acted before. I'd forgotten- it's been so long since I've seen you, nearly a century, and I'd-"

She sucked in a sharp breath. She'd known about the thirty years he'd spent searching for her, but he'd never disclosed that nearly a century had passed before he'd seen her again. If he'd only been with Rose for a few years (though she suspected it had been for more than the two years that Billie Piper had played Rose), then he had to have been on his own for... it had to have been at least eighty years, though she suspected it was even longer than that.

Before she had a chance to apologize (for what, she didn't know), he quickly continued.

"-forgotten about the emotional abuse. Especially in the delicate state that you're in-" she was the one feeling surprise running through her when he said that. "-my behavior, it wasn't... okay. So, I'm sorry." He sniffed, his hands in his pockets. Behind his mask, he was carefully searching her, but there was a mere gentleness that resided about him now as he looked upon her.

Well. It turned out 10 wasn't such a prat after all.

She blinked for a moment before she nodded, almost dazed. "Apology accepted," she told him. "But-" and here, he looked like he was bracing himself. "I wasn't lying to Rose, before. I have no idea what I'm doing here-"

"Anna, you can't-" he started, before she shook her head.

"If I couldn't I wouldn't be offering. Surely-" _you haven't forgotten that in the century since you saw me last_. She cleared her throat. "You know that I don't offer if I can't do it."

There was hope fighting in his chest, but he pushed it down as hard as it would go. "How?" he asked, leaning up against the doorway. "How would it be possible?"

She shrugged and he felt his hearts falling in his chest. "I don't know," she said, saying the words he dreaded to hear. "But if I'm offering, it means it's possible."

Over the six years he'd been with her, he'd observed her, the way she'd used her abilities and how her time sense had shaped what she'd allowed herself to do. He was wary about it, though. The way she followed her abilities sometimes was like that of a religious person following their faith: no scientific proof that it would work out and yet, there they were, still following along and attending mass every Sunday or Wednesday (or in one particular religion, every third Thursday every three years).

He'd never told her about his doubts, especially because her abilities (and her time sense in particular) hadn't yet led them astray. He tried not to let it show now as he continued.

"Whatever is to happen is to happen," he told her, not outright letting his doubt show but hoping that she might think it was because she was 'low on energy' that he was questioning her. "I had hoped that that might mean a future with Rose, but if you're telling me now-"

An exasperated look crossed her face, one he couldn't understand, before it devolved into something more serious.

"I need you to trust me."

The last time he'd seen her, she'd still been an all-powerful being, but there was an uncertainty about her that he hadn't noticed, or had downplayed due to the emotional abuse. Now, though, he could see that had been shed, nearly entirely. It had been obvious in the medbay when she'd refused to let him yell at her, but it had never been more obvious than in that moment, when she was looking at him,, the most earnest expression he'd ever seen currently resting on her face (but only because he'd never seen himself in the mirror).

"I can save Rose, and I will. This is a promise that I am making, and that I will keep."

His eyes barely flicked over her, dancing across her face as he took her in. He finally asked her about what she never thought about.

"What happens to you?"

She shrugged, looking away, discomfort in her own skin roaring back. There was a sudden change on her, though, stilling her, before she looked back at him, the solution sitting in her eyes.

"There was- when you told me to undo it-" and here, he barely flinched before he could catch himself. Now that she'd told him about it, he'd now always have to tell her to undo it, no matter how little the reasons made sense. He'd already traveled with Rose. If she erased it, he wouldn't have traveled with her _at all,_ thereby making that fear come to life.

Maybe that would've been part of his reasoning, he thought, barely shifting. He was startled by the revelation that had just come to him. Because he never deserved the good in his life, and maybe, just maybe, he could save Rose from a cruel monster like himself. Truth be told, it wasn't just Rose that he never would've traveled with; he never would've traveled with anybody again, traveling alone for the rest of his days.

A thought he'd never had crept through him, but it was too horrible to even consider it.

"In the..."

He shook his head, smiling at the sheer ridiculous notion of it.

"No, no, but I never would've done, I _never_ would've-"

He opened and closed his mouth, searching Anna.

"But I wouldn't have though, I wouldn't have exposed her to that kind of darkness-" the confusion gave way to realization before a spark of fear that he hated flickered through Anna's eyes. Resolve steeled her eyes a moment later, and she sat up more.

"Yes, you did," she said.

He pointed his finger at her and she barely flinched, and it made him wonder just what type of person he'd turned into in the future-

Because telling her to undo it, how could that have been anything less than deeply traumatic for her?

He felt everything falling out of himself and he put his arms at his side. "But I didn't, though," he said, the storm of emotions inside of him making him want to move with life, but he found himself surprisingly unable to. "I wouldn't have done."

"But you did," she said, and his lip curled into a snarl, but she held her ground this time (and some part of him wondered how she could've married him, let alone stand to be near him, when he'd probably done the thing that she feared the most. Perhaps he wasn't the only one with self-destructive tendencies, he mused bitterly). "And I know that's hard for you, and I'm sorry, but you did, and that's why you told me to undo it, because you realized-" her eyes widened an alarming amount very quickly before she barely shook her head, holding a hand up. "You thought, you _thought-"_

"That by doing this, by saving Gallifrey as you'd done, you'd taken the chance of making it so that I never would've traveled with Rose at all."

Ice cold fear froze her. He searched her, feeling a numbness spreading through him, and he barely shook his head.

"I'm sorry," he told her. "I'm so sorry."

He didn't understand why that fear seemed to increase, or why she became a little more manic. He especially couldn't understand why she looked as if she wanted to dart from the room, even as she got up from her sitting position to get on her knees on her bed, her hands up in a placating manner.

Despite all of this, she said words that surprised him.

"I'm not undoing it," she told him.

He frowned so hard that it must've turned his whole face down. She barely flinched at it, and he barely took a step back, his face once more neutral, barely holding up his hands.

"I don't care if that's what you want, if you think that that's-that's somehow justice or _whatever,_ I'm not- I'm not undoing it, I asked you in the future and you said no, and I told you-"

He recognized this for what it was. Her PTSD was in play, and because she thought the last time they'd had this conversation he'd asked her to undo it, he would ask her to undo it again (Despite the fact that that wasn't even logical, as he was currently traveling with Rose, no matter how short a time it might be).

But, that didn't matter right now. The only thing that mattered was helping her, and that started by simply not feeding into her narrative, doing a complete three sixty so they might be able to gain a semblance of trust back between them (and he questioned once more how she could've done something like _marry_ him if mistrust for him ran this deeply).

So, instead of trying to explain or to make her understand, he simply nodded.

"Okay," he said, before he nodded once more. "You're more than welcome-"

"I mean it," she interrupted him, a fierceness that stole his breath running across her face.

But, he was the Doctor and able to roll with the punches.

"I know," he said, before he put his hand on the door. "You're welcome to travel with me and Rose until you get your energy back, and then-"

"I'm not undoing it then," she told him.

He wondered, and it was the first time he'd ever done so, who had hurt her.

Of course, it had been an inkling in the back of his mind; he pictured the face of the person who had hurt her, sometimes a man, sometimes a woman, but always one of the most evil things that humanity could produce. Trust was sacred, especially in human culture. To break it was one of the worst things a person could do. It meant that the person had to therefore be one of the worst that humanity had to offer.

Of course, then his mind turned to species that weren't human as the culprit what had hurt her, seeing as she was an all-powerful being and nearing three thousand and whatnot... and then he let his mind drift from the topic because he started to get angry and it didn't do to dwell on the past when he had his Anna, his so beautiful Anna, sitting so close to him, alive and healthy and whole (for the most part anyway).

This damage was worse than he'd thought-

No, he realized, startled once more. It wasn't worse than he'd thought. He'd _made_ it worse, by doing what he'd done, because he'd torn open a wound that she'd probably long since buried, made even worse by the fact that it came from him in a vulnerable time (being tortured by anything wasn't easy, all-powerful being or not, and he was assuming that this had happened after she'd gotten back. At least, he hoped it did. Get it over with quickly, so that they could move on in whatever capacity that took).

It had come from him, a mere vehicle for what Time needed done, despite the fact that hurting her in the worst way she could possibly be hurt was the last thing he'd ever wanted to do.

A second had passed between her saying the words and his thought process. "Okay," he said, before he nodded. "Rest up, Rose and I will be heading out but let us know when you're feeling up for-"

"I'm not-"

She _finally,_ finally hesitated, searching him.

"You're not... asking me. To undo it. Are you?"

"I'm really, really not," he told her. She bit her lip, frowning, before she glanced down at the sheet. She looked up at him once more.

"And it would make even less sense because you get to keep her, now."

His hearts ached at those words, but he kept the expression off of his face, not even mentioning the problematic nature of what she was promising. He also didn't try to explain what had happened, in reference to time and how delicate it could be (especially where all-powerful beings were involved, he thought), because doing that now would probably just push her back into the PTSD episode she'd finally just come through.

He cleared his throat. "So, yes, let us know when you're feeling up for an adventure. Your choice. Any time, any place-"

"I really am going to save her."

There were two paths laid out before him, suddenly. One, he argued with her that that wasn't how time worked and even if it was, she would disappear into a blaze of smoke after it was done. Two, he just agreed with her.

So, he put on his best smile.

"I believe you," he said.

She searched his face for any sign of a lie before she nodded.

"Great," she said. "Then, adventures. Let's have them."


	5. Chapter 5

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> TW: Small amount of violence

He felt surprise trail through him. "What now?" he asked, watching as she got up from the bed.

"Yes, now," she told him, before she moved about her room with practiced ease, moving to the dresser before she opened the drawer. "Now, set her for random, because I've to change out of these jim jams what you've placed me into."

He felt a mild annoyance trailing through him when she glanced over at him, wiggling her eyebrows in suggestion.

"Or maybe you'd like to stick around and watch-"

It was surprising, how she looked like she'd made a mistake. She quickly turned back to the dresser, shaking her head.

"Sorry, sorry, it's habit. Considering you've the face of my husband and everything- it won't happen again."

He felt his eyebrows raise at that, and everything that it entailed. Because it meant that, not only had she been okay with him telling her to undo it (a situation which probably would resolve itself two seconds after it had happened, for the sheer fact that he'd 'come to his senses' or some such nonsense. In reality, it would be a semblance of memory bleeding through, combined with the fact that the event had already come to pass, and therefore, time was passing as it should. He really hated it when people crossed into their own personal timestream, especially when it was something as sensitive as this. Even if she hadn't done it on purpose, considering she'd stated she'd no idea how or why she'd ended up here. Looking at her now, it was a mystery for another day, considering he didn't want to set her off. Again), it also meant that she'd married the version of him that had told her to undo it in the first place.

He wanted to ask her why, but he knew she might take that the wrong way as well, so he simply nodded his understanding.

"Perfectly understandable," he said, scratching the back of his ear as he thought about-

Except, he didn't have to make it clear to her that he'd loved her in the past tense, or this him did, anyway.

That was part of what he loved about Anna. She was clever and made connections so quickly. Even if he wasn't in love with her, he did still love her. It was just a different kind of love. He couldn't imagine loving her in that way again, but the proof of that was standing before him, looking rather meek that she'd tried to flirt with a past version of her husband to be.

A husband he might never have to be now.

He quickly pushed this and any hope about keeping Rose aside, before he gave her a smile.

"So. Random, then?"

#####

"No, but..." she frowned, pausing. "I know this place."

"Probably-"

Whatever explanation the Doctor had been about to give was cut off when Anna shot her hand back, shushing him. She quietly crept out of the Tardis, looking around the alcove they'd landed in.

It was a place with grass and trees surrounding them on all sides and the light casting familiar shadows on the ground. She frowned before she crept out, looking around at this place, before she tried to understand, tried to remember, tried to-

She didn't get to try to do anything. In the next moment, she only had time to hear the whistling sound for a second before pain erupted throughout her entire right side.

Her entire world went white for who knew how long before she came to. She was breathing hard, her throat sore and raw from what she'd assumed was a lot of screaming. It took her a second to register the blue figure above her, two sets of black eyes stacked one on top of the other. It took her a second longer to register that there were multiple sets of blue arms as well, and that one of said arms was leading down to her throat.

She had about two seconds to recognize the cold steel pressed against her throat before pain burst through her once more.

#####

Anna had shushed him, taken a step out of the Tardis, and then had immediately been snatched away. Whether it was kicking, he didn't know, but he heard her scream and recognized it as both that of surprise and pain.

He immediately raced after her, calling her name. When he rounded the corner of his Tardis, he saw that Anna was being dragged back by an invisible force through the trees. He called her name again before he ran after her, pulling out the sonic and trying to ascertain what, precisely, was doing the dragging.

She wasn't dragged back for long. Or, rather, she was dragged into a group of people on horseback before the Doctor lost sight of her.

It wasn't horseback, but it was a species similar to horses, their fur a black that was so black it almost wouldn't register to the human eye. They had an extra set of both front and back legs, and they were so huge that they dwarfed him.

The species riding them were bigger than what Hagrid in the _Harry Potter_ series had been described as, but they weren't a species that could be classified as giants. They were the Regnars, blue and six armed and four eyed, with a royalty system that was similar to Earth except that the title of crown ruler was passed down to the first born as opposed to the first born male. They were one of the rare species that, despite the fact that they had technology, they didn't let it bleed into every pore and facet of their everyday life, still choosing to ride on horseback (or what was similar to horseback, as the case may have been).

He easily crossed into the circle, and his hearts ached at the sight of Anna writhing on the ground in pain, game plan after game plan flying through his head as he crossed to her.

"There's another one," he heard in his peripheral.

"Hold it back," someone else replied.

He managed to make it across the circle in three steps, almost reaching her, before he felt his arms catching and he was being dragged back.

"No, no, wait, this is a misunderstanding, just listen to me, just listen- _no!"_

It hadn't been an invisible force tugging Anna back. It had been a person. The man himself had stowed the crossbow that had shot the weapon that had lodged itself into Anna's shoulder, connected to the crossbow still by a fine, thin black string. That was what had pulled her back. The man had dismounted his horse and currently, he was pulling a knife from his holster, kneeling down next to the still screaming Anna.

The Doctor kept imagining it, over and over again, him cutting her throat and her bleeding out all over the forest floor, choking on her own blood, dying in pain and alone and so cold.

Anna was always very adamant about reassuring him that she would come back to life. But, with her so low on energy and the fact that she'd just come back to him, he wasn't willing to take that chance.

"We're not trespassing, we're not trespassing, let us walk away and you'll never see us again, we're not trespassing on your lands, we're not here to hurt you or steal from you you'll never see us again _please!"_

He spoke so quickly the normal reasons that people were upset about having random strangers on their lands and he was so preoccupied that he didn't notice that they'd all fallen silent, staring at the pair of them, amazed.

"Did it just speak?"

"I think I heard it speak as well," the one with the knife still pressed against Anna's throat said, holding her down even as she cried out in pain. Tears were falling down her cheeks to the grass below, but she'd stopped struggling, the Doctor assumed, because she could feel the knife at her throat.

He hated this with every fiber of his being, but he continued to speak. "Just listen to me," he said, his voice low. "We don't want to hurt you, we aren't trespassing, just let us walk away and we'll- you'll never see us again, I swear, please, please, please."

"It is!" one of the other men on horseback said. "It is speaking! I've never heard of such a thing. A tr'ellenar that speaks?"

"Just listen to me, please," he repeated. "We-"

_A tr'ellenar? What's a tr'ellenar?_

His mind was huge and able to do more than one thing at a time. It was why he was able to speak as some part of his brain ran through the rolodex in his mind of alien species. By the time he'd finished speaking, he still hadn't found whatever species they were speaking of.

"-are not here to trespass, we didn't do that on purpose. If you let us walk away now, I promise you, you will never see us again. I promise. Whatever assurances you need, I am more than willing to give to you, but you have to let us go, right now, right this second." His eyes continually flicked between Anna and the man that had been amazed he could speak. "Right now."

"This is incredible!" the man said, as he hopped off of his horse. The Doctor's patience was starting to grow thin as the man walked to him. "It seems to actually understand communication and is making fully formed sentences."

He was a daft old, panicking idiot. It took him as long for the man to stand in front of him to realize that he and Anna were the Tr'ellenars.

#####

"Does it have a name?"

Anna wanted to shift. Something was digging painfully into her back, which only caused the thumping of her heart to thump painfully throughout her right side. There were a lot of things that she wanted to do in that moment. Scream, for one. Find the Doctor and curl up into his side, for two. But, mostly, she just wanted to shift so that the thing didn't dig into her back anymore.

She felt a cold sort of shock sting her when she felt the cold blade press into her neck further.

"No, no, no, wait, wait, please!" she heard someone say, in a far off distance. Things were starting to grow colder, which probably wasn't a good sign. "I'm-I'm the Doctor, that's Anna, Anna Monroe, we're not it, I'm a he, she's a she, we're people, we're a person, we talk and we have loves and lives and-"

"Fascinating!" someone distantly said, and she wondered what was so fascinating. She was starting to get colder. "Has anyone heard tell of Tr'ellenars that talk?"

She heard general murmurings of people saying that they hadn't, but she was distracted from this when pain sparked through her anew, something shifting. She blacked out for a moment before she came to, breathing hard.

#####

"Father, it's in a lot of pain. I'd like to put it out of it's misery."

"You can't do this, we're not animals, we're people, please, just let her go, let her go right now!"

The Doctor was in a frenzy now, being held back more firmly by what he assumed to be the rest of the hunting party. That's all that this could be was a hunting party, and Anna had been the unlucky fox to this bloodhound hunt.

He was surprised, then, when the knife wielding man looked at him directly in the eyes and began to speak like he was a person.

"Even if we were to get it back to the castle-"

"She, it's a she, and she is not an animal, she's a person, you can see that, I know you can, please-"

The man held up his hand.

"Even if we were to get her back to the castle, it- she, Anna, you said?"

He felt a frenzied surprise and gratitude and he quickly nodded.

"She will have lost too much blood by that time for the one scientist who is versed in Tr'ellenar physiology to do anything for her."

He shook his head, his hearts beating rapidly as he felt something like hope start to painfully scrap up his chest. "I have-I have supplies, I can- I can treat her, there is no need for this, to-"

"Why are you so versed in Tr'ellenar physiology, Meinken?"

His eyes flicked between his father and the Doctor, and there was no small amount of shame buried where only the Doctor could see.

"I studied Tr'ellenar physiology, on the off-chance that one might appear, so that I may know best how to kill it when my time came."

The Doctor didn't even know what to do with that, nor would he have, if he'd had more time.

"Very studious! Did you all hear that? My son, the future ruler of the Mekbar kingdom, prepared for any occasion!"

He sounded so proud that his son knew how to kill another living being-

Oh, no, wait, future ruler?

This wasn't just any hunting party. It was a royal hunting party.

"As for the tr'ellenars themselves, they shall be taken back to the castle to be studied. See why these ones are special enough to be able to speak."

#####

Anna existed very far away from her body right now, but she was forced back to it when she felt herself being shifted. She screamed in pain again, though a murmured apology was whispered in her ear.

"It's fine," she whispered back, even as her breathing was labored, even as she wanted to scream again, even as her body felt like a blocky thing that shouldn't exist because it was just so heavy, why was her stupid body so heavy?

"Father, if I might, if the tr'ellenar is saying that-that it can patch up it's... mate, I see no reason not to let it."

_What's a tr'ellenar? Why does it have a mate? Where is it's mate? Is that a thing? What's happening?_

"At the very least, it will be able to survive Mathias' examinations a little longer than it otherwise would."

"You speak as if the Tr'ellenar's can perform medical procedures."

"It is stating that it can."

"And we should trust the word of a Tr'ellenar over that of a thousand years experience that our kind has had with Tr'ellenars?"

"I understand, father, but there are no records of Tr'ellenars being able to speak before this, either. Perhaps they are not Tr'ellenars at all. Perhaps they have simply taken the shape of them, or they are a similar species. The legend of the Time Lord states that the Time Lord came from a star far from here. Perhaps that is where they have come from as well."

#####

The legend of the time lord? Had he been here before and just didn't remember it?

"Yep, that's me," he quickly cut in, just to be on the safe side. "That's me, I'm a time lord."

He'd been happy to sit back and let Meinken advocate for him, as he seemed to be on his side for some reason that he'd yet to figure out. If there were legends of time lords, however, that was a different ball park.

He wasn't one to normally take advantage of a situation that bolstered time lords as legends. He was like Anna in that way in that he hated the praise of being worshipped as a god, which he could be perceived as, considering all the technological advancements he had. To any lower being, what was a scientist but a god?

But, for Anna, he would happily play the role of a god. He might even be able to make thunder and lightning appear at will. He'd never tried to excite the molecules in the air from this far away to create simulated thunder, but he was most definitely willing to give it a shot.

The king laughed. "I see although tr'ellenars have gained the ability to speak, they are still a simple creature."

He wasn't normally this bothered with stupidity, but the king walked over to him and spoke down to him like he were just out of the loom.

"You are a _tr'ellenar,_ not a _time lord._ A _time lord_ is a magical being with the ability to change into whatever shape it wants. It has the anger of a thousand suns. A _tr'ellenar_ is not even _capable_ of speech, let alone something like the anger of a thousand suns. Do you understand?" he asked, speaking slowly.

"Your legends are wrong," he spat out the words at him, his patience growing thinner by the minute, though he was feeling more gratitude by the second that Meinken had released Anna, the knife no longer pointing at her throat. That didn't mean that the double pronged bolt bode any better, but progress was progress. "Time lords aren't magical, they're flesh and blood with the ability to- Oh, I remember this now," he said, looking down at the grass, realization creeping up on him.

They were on Beltrop. The last time he'd been here, he'd been in his fifth body, and the Mekbarians had only had four limbs instead of six. It went to show how much time had passed for the planet since he'd visited the place. They'd been a very primitive people back then, and the situation had been less than ideal. He couldn't remember the exact details, but he did barely remember explaining the concept of regeneration to… it must've been a companion, because why would he explain something like that to the _locals?_ In any case, one of the locals must've heard about it, misinterpreted the message, and it had just become legend at that point.

He also remembered that anger that he'd felt over… he didn't remember, how long ago was that, centuries? A thousand years? More than that? The point was, he did remember the anger, and whatever it was, it had been bad enough that the only two things that had stuck around in their supposed legend was his ability to change _something_ and his anger, though even the 'something' had been lost to time.

The anger of a time lord, he supposed.

"Right, yes, okay, so it's not _shape changer,"_ he told them. "Time lords look like Tr'ellenars-" because Tr'ellenars had to be humans, though how they'd come into contact with humans five centuries early, when humans would first discover the planet and begin trading with them for resources (a plant that grew here was excellent for the fuel that powered human ships, and the locals couldn't resist a bit of chocolate) was a mystery to him. Maybe a rift had opened up and deposited the humans from Earth to here, somehow. He didn't know, but that wasn't the focus right now. "-or, I should say, Tr'ellenars look like time lords. I don't know what happened to get your legends so mixed up, but there is one thing it wasn't wrong about, and that is the anger of a time lord."

He let a little bit of what the dalek legends called the Oncoming Storm leak through to the surface, because he was that angry and he needed to get Anna back to the Tardis, before she bled out or worse. She might have been an all-powerful being, but, as she'd explained to him in the minutes between the walk to her bedroom and the console room, it meant she couldn't do as much. It meant healing was probably out of the question.

Just a bit of the Oncoming Storm was enough to make Meinken back up a step, looking a little terrified, though the king held his ground, even as he tried not to show that he was afraid as well.

"I promise you, the fury that your ancestors faced will be nothing compared to what happens if you do not let me take care of Anna right now."

"Father, perhaps he is telling the truth," Meinken said, weakly.

"It is a tr'ellenar!" his father rebuked him. "You can see that as clearly as I."

"Perhaps he has taken on Tr'ellenar form, father, there is still much we do not know about the Tr'ellenar. Perhaps they are-are part of the same species line, as berabeasts are to pentars."

"Why would a being as powerful as a time lord take the shape of a lowly tr'ellenar?"

"Because maybe they are not as lowly as we had always perceived them to be."

He wondered where this high opinion for tr'ellenars had come from when Meinken had no doubt grown up around proproganda stating that tr;ellenars were nothing more than beasts to be hunted.

"I feel I am learning quite a bit about you today, Meinken. Things that I did not know before, such as your high regard for these animals?"

"Father, I mean you no disrespect, but they are obviously not animals. They have speech, they communicate, they understand the concept of medicine enough to know that it will save her life. Father, please, if nothing else, let us confirm that he is a time lord before we take further action."

The king looked over at the Doctor before he looked back at his son. "There. I have confirmed with my own two eyes that he is not a time lord, but a lowly tr'ellenar, as is that one dying on the ground, which need I remind you that you must kill it in order to ascend to the throne?"

"Over my dead body," he immediately snarled, struggling in the guards' hold.

Meinken held up his hand to the Doctor, and his snarl only deepened.

"The stories say that time lords have two hearts," Meinken quickly cut in. "It is a well-established fact that tr'ellenars only have one. If this one only has one heart, then I will happily kill the chosen tr'ellenar to ascend to my rightful place on the throne, as ruler of Mekbar." He stopped, searching his father's eyes. "Please, father."

His father searched him before he nodded. "For you, my son, I will do this. Horace, Borace, pin it to the ground."

He felt impatience rolling through him but allowed himself to be pinned face down.

"The other way," Meinken said. There was a brief pause. "Tr'ellenar's hearts are located on the front."

"You have repeatedly said that this is not a tr;ellenar," the king pointed out.

"He's right, you won't be able to feel my heartsbeat through my back," he quickly rushed out, not sure why he hadn't thought of that as he'd been pinned down. No, he did. It was because he assumed they would use a pulse point. But, why would they know something as specific as a pulse point when they didn't even regard Tr'ellenars as people?

His eyes caught sight of Anna, who'd ceased all movement. Blood was pouring steadily from her shoulder down to the grass, creating a puddle of it that was quickly soaked up by the dirt beneath her. He wanted nothing more than to heal her, even if they weren't able to fly away after that was done. There was still work to be done.

"Do as the prince commands," the king said, in a tired voice.

He was quickly rolled over, his arms spread out and pinned to his sides, his legs also pinned because they apparently thought he would lash out. That probably wasn't an unjustified response, as tr'ellenars- humans did tend to have very violent reactions when threatened.

A moment later, the king was kneeling down over him, placing his hands on his chest. The Doctor looked over at Anna, and knew that she'd just been dragged unconscious by the pain and not by the blood loss. It still hurt him to know that she was unconscious at all.

 _At least Rose is safe_ , he thought, because she had been smart enough to stay hidden during this whole nightmare fiasco.

He was distracted from this thought when the king jumped back as if he'd been burned.

"This is not possible! Time lords do not look like tr'ellenars!" the king shook his head.

"Technically-" he'd started to repeat the explanation that humans looked like time lords, but the king interrupted him.

"We shall take them both back to the castle, to be examined by Mathias."

But, Anna would be long dead before that happened, and there was no way he was about to let that happen.

"Father-"

"You really don't want to do that," the Doctor said, allowing the anger of the time lord gathering around him. The king looked more openly unnerved, and the guards actually glanced between each other like, _Are we really about to try to hold down an angry time lord if his anger is going to burn us like a thousand suns? Do we really want to do that today?_ "Because, I'll tell you what, if she dies, you'll be _wishing_ for the anger of a thousand suns after I'm done with the lot of you."

#####

Anna was coming back, floating back to consciousness. There was a dull throbbing in her shoulder and she frowned, barely whimpering at the pain of it.

"It will be allowed to patch up it's mate, but they both shall be returned to the castle, for further examination."

"Father-"

"I will hear no more of this!" he said. "Allow it to patch up it's mate, but do not let it free entirely. We do not wish to see first hand why the tr'ellenar were labelled as beasts in the first place."

"Yes, sire."

"Sire," she whispered, past the pain that was steadily growing steadily worse. "Why…?"

A sharp pain erupted through her shoulder and she cried out, opening her eyes.

Above her was a humanoid. It had blue skin and four black eyes, and it smiled at her, nodding encouragingly.

"It is all right. Your mate is going to patch you up. Just try to relax."

She searched him, confusion mounting as quickly as the pain, and the person above her frowned, looking back.

"Can she understand me?"

"Course she can," the Doctor said with false cheer and a bitter undertone. "She's just in immense amounts of pain because somebody shot her with a crossbow-"

The Doctor cried out in pain in the next instant, and she instantly became more aware as she tried to sit up.

Pain shot through her like an arrow. When she came back, her entire right side was once again on fire. All that she wanted to do was run from this pain and never look back, but she couldn't even move, let alone run.

She felt enormous relief when she looked above her to see the Doctor.

"Doctor?"

"Yeah, yeah, Anna, it's me," he said. "I need you to focus on me, all right? I need you to stay with me."

She frowned. "What's happening?"

"Okay, listen to me," he said, and she realized that she could feel him grabbing her left hand, squeezing it reassuringly. "You're fine, but you're injured. I'm about to patch you up, but in order to do that, I need to put you to sleep so that you aren't in any pain. Just relax, don't fight it," he told her, quietly. She started to open her mouth, to protest, but he put his hands on her face. "I've got you, just relax, just sleep. You're okay, you're okay, sh…"

It was the strangest thing because it was like she could feel something pushing up against the outer edges of her mind. It sort of felt like something pressing up against a rubber band, if her mind was the rubber band. He never actually got in, but maybe he never needed to. Maybe because of the pain that she was in, as well as the weakened state, allowed him to put her to sleep.

#####

Anna fell limp under his arms and he quickly instructed Meinken to use two of his hands to hold her down and a third one to hold her hand. All that he could focus on was his work of patching Anna up.

The smell of him cauterizing the wound with the sonic was all-encompassing, and he felt the grief and the guilt lingering at the fact that this had happened on his watch. All-powerful being or no, she was still his responsibility, and she'd been injured and he hated it.

He quickly wrapped up her wound and sat back, nodding at Meinken that it was done.

"Grab it."

"Wha-" he barely had time to protest before he was grabbed from behind, manacles slipped on him as well as a muzzle, which he couldn't say he appreciated much, but at least Anna was patched up and no longer bleeding to death. At least that was something.

They were both dragged back to the castle, unwilling but not fighting all the while.

#####

Anna felt like she was literally floating back to consciousness. She barely managed to open her eyes, though she couldn't say she was unhappy when she saw the face next to hers.

"Doctor," she said, quietly.

He smiled, relief filling his eyes.

"'m I dreaming?"

"Nah, just on an impressive amount of painkillers," he told her, her hand clasped in his.

She frowned, searching him. "Drugged me?" she asked him.

"Had to," he told her. "You would've been in an immense amount of pain otherwise."

"What for?"

He started to look troubled before he cleared his throat, shaking his head before he smiled a little. "I doubt you'll even remember this conversation," he told her, "so telling you feels a bit pointless. Just try to get some sleep. I'll be with you the entire time."

"Course you will," she said, blearily as she closed her eyes. "You're my husband and you…"

She fell asleep, never knowing how grateful the Doctor was that, although Rose was in the room when she'd said the words, she still hadn't had the misfortune of hearing about the future.

A future that might never come to pass, now, he thought, quietly, but he pushed this thought from his mind. Even if he did believe Anna that she could do something, there was no telling the repercussions that they would have to face from those actions.

After all, the road to hell was paved with good intentions. He just hoped Anna realized that before it was too late (even if the irrational part of his mind wanted that wanted to keep Rose forever wanted nothing more than the opposite).

#####

When Anna awoke, she was already whimpering with pain, her right shoulder burning with it.

Panic engulfed her for a long moment.

Had it all just been a dream?

Before she'd utilized the full effects of her powers, she'd had a chronic right shoulder injury that often put her in pain. But, what if she hadn't utilized the full effects of her powers, and now, she was in pain because she was waking up?

"Oh fu-"

She gasped, falling back to the bed, gritting her teeth so hard that her jaw ached.

"Anna?"

She looked over through her lashes to see a familiar face, and all of her panic fled out of her.

"Rose," she said.

She was so relieved that it didn't even hit her that something about this was wrong for a solid thirty seconds, and by that time, Rose had begun to speak.

"Yeah, it's-it's me. Are you all right? You look-"

"Rose?" she asked, looking over at her once more.

Her frazzled, pain filled mind couldn't put the puzzle pieces together fast enough. Because she vaguely remembered Rose at _Journey's End_... and then she remembered what she'd thought, that she wouldn't do this to either of them, that she couldn't. What if she hadn't? What if Rose was sitting in front of her because she'd rewritten time?

"What did I-"

Rose didn't get to hear the end of that sentence. Pain burst through her right shoulder and she cried out before she laid back, groaning. Her right side hurt, and she quickly curled up into a ball, trying to lessen the pain.

"All right, okay, hold on, just-" she heard Rose curse underneath her breath before Anna managed to barely look up at her. "I'm gonna go get the Doctor, okay? Just wait here a mo, I'll be right back."

"Rose," she tried, but Rose was already out of there like a bullet, flying out of the room before Anna had a chance to stop her.

She cursed before she pushed her cheek back into the pillow.

She tried to heal herself, to at least gain some semblance of understanding back. A sharp pain rushed through her chest and she felt the darkness threatening to take her before she came back, gasping for air.

What had happened? What in the world had happened? She had... what? What had she done?

She didn't get the chance to answer that when she heard someone stepping into the room. Hope leapt into her chest that maybe it was Rose what had stepped into the room, and she turned towards her, ready for some answers-

Surprise filled her when she saw that it was a blue humanoid, a knife raised in one of his six hands, advancing on her.

She acted on instinct, quickly pushing herself back into the wall. Pain incapacitated her for a moment, shooting through her right shoulder with a vengeance.

But, a moment was all it took. He was suddenly over her, the knife angled down towards her chest.

The only reason it hadn't plunged into her chest was because she'd managed to catch his wrist at the last second. Adrenaline had came through in the next moment, dulling the pain and sharpening her senses. She managed to twist her body so that her chest was no longer underneath the knife, before she twisted her legs up. She planted her feet against the wall before she kicked out, pushing herself off of the bed and sliding out from underneath him.

She hit the floor with a dull thud, but it brought the pain roaring back. She screamed out before, anger now thrumming through her veins, she quickly pushed herself back-

She cried out in shock and pain when a foot was planted firmly on her chest, forcing her to breathe out the rest of her air.

She scrabbled at it, pain thumping through her, but she wasn't able to fight back more when he grabbed her by her right arm, yanking her up.

She saw white for a long solid moment before she managed to come back, breathing hard. There was a hand fisted into her shirt, pushing her back against the wall. Her shoulder thumped with pain even more fiercely and her toes barely scrapped the ground. She groaned out a sound of pain, her head falling forward.

"Let her go," she heard a familiar voice say, and she frowned before she barely managed to look out of the corner of her eyes to see the Pinstripe Doctor standing in the doorway.

She barely managed to feel all of the memories come through, falling in quick succession, the New Doctor and Gavin and then finally, finally leading to here.

 _I didn't get to tell him about Vegas_ , she thought, before whoever this man was pushed her further into the wall and she barely had the air to cry out.

"So it is true, then. Tr'ellenar that speak," he said.

"I'm not a tr'ellenar. I'm a time lord, and I can promise you-"

The man laughed, and she felt tears finally starting down her cheeks, though her more immediate problem was that she didn't have enough air and was starting to get dizzy.

The man suddenly wasn't laughing anymore. Instead, the room went cold, and she saw that there was terror on his face.

"I can promise you, the fury of _all_ of the thousand suns if you don't release her _right. Now."_

There was barely a moment between them; a snarl appeared on his face and for a moment, the hold he had on her tightened even further.

"If I kill it, I become King of Mekbar," he said, and she raised her eyebrows, still trying to get air in. This was a development she hadn't foreseen. "That is the law as it has been written."

"The law has just been _changed._ I saw to that, just now, the only reason that I left her here in a place where you don't even see her as a _person,_ was so that I could change it. It's being announced to the kingdom in a week's time, but right now, right in this very moment, you have a chance, a single chance. Release her, right now. Hand her over to me. _Now."_

She made a noise of pain, but surprise and gratitude filled her when he did release the hold he had on her. She managed to suck in a breath before surprise and dread filled her when he pulled her to his chest, his arms encapsulating her, the tip of the knife slotted against her ribcage. She couldn't help that her face crumpled with pain. Even being an all-powerful being didn't make her impervious to pain, she thought.

Except it could, she realized uselessly. She could make herself impervious to pain. But, pain was part of the human experience. If she wanted to be the right kind of being of power, then it meant she had to remember what it meant to be human. Even if it meant she was in excruciating pain every now and again.

"If you truly are a time lord and it is truly your friend-"

_"She-"_

"Then it is certain that you will kill me as soon as I release it. Step aside. Now."

"I won't kill you," The Doctor said. "If you release her right now. Give her to me, and I will spare you your life. I'm giving you this chance right now to do so, but if you don't, if you dare cross me... I can promise you that you will get to see first hand why the legends of the time lord's fury are true, in excruciating detail. Let her go."

She was able to see his eyes, his old, ancient eyes, and see that he wasn't lying. There was fury in them, and the promise of a slow death if the person holding her didn't do as he was told right this instance.

"This is your last chance."

The air stilled around them. For a moment that turned into an eternity, The Doctor stared at the man behind her with an expression that she'd rarely seen on his face. In truth, she wasn't sure that she'd ever seen that look on his face in person. It was rage, yes, a deep and unknowable rage, but she'd known him for so long that she was able to see it.

There was an unknowable fear as well. Terror in the very deepest parts of his eyes. He was terrified.

She didn't know of what, though. Yes, okay, dying was horrible and she wouldn't be able to have an anesthetic to numb the pain in the form of her powers making it painless. But, at the end of it, she would be back up to full power. She would still have to travel with them, obviously, until _Doomsday_ when she would save Rose. But, at least she could save more than she couldn't.

So, why was he pulling out the time lord rage?

She didn't know. But, whatever the man behind her saw in those eyes, he finally relented a moment later, throwing her at him.

He caught her, and movement exploded around them. She was only able to catch it because there was so much of it in the next moment, a bustling noise of people flooding the room.

"Okay, okay, I've got you," he said, and he picked her up.

Whether it was from the let down of adrenaline or because of the pain or a mix of both, darkness started to crowd through her.

"Anna?" she heard Rose start. "Anna, I'm sorry, I'm so sorry, I didn't mean to-"

That was all she heard before she felt the darkness engulf her completely, stealing consciousness from her in the blink of an eye.

She came back sometime later, cold flowing through her veins. She frowned as she shivered, opening her eyes in displeasure.

"Hey, there she is," she heard a voice coming from somewhere to her right.

"I'm cold," she complained.

"Better than dead," he pointed out.

She frowned, finally finding him with her eyes. "I don't see how the two correlate."

He didn't remedy this. Instead, he explained. "It's a blood transfusion, should only take a minute or two."

She groaned before she tried to roll over, exhausted and wanting to find that comfortable darkness.

"Nope, need you to be awake for it."

"Want or need?" she asked him, looking back at him.

"Hardy har har," he said. "Come on, let me have a semblance of sitting up, at least."

She rolled her eyes before she managed it, looking over at him. She stuck her tongue out at him. He surprised her by sticking his tongue back out at her.

"You're a child," she informed him.

"You started it," he replied.

"Case in point!" she said, before she frowned. Events had flooded back, a flash of the look in his eyes and the terror he'd obviously been feeling. She looked over at him, trying to convey seriousness with her words. "You know that I'll always come back to life."

He was looking at her, that childish look on his face. It quickly faded, and because she was looking at him, she saw the way his face reflected his age for a single moment before he managed to transfigure it to something that was serious but much less so.

"Do I?" he asked. The coat was absent, though if she knew him at all, she knew it was in the console room. Currently, his hands were tucked away in his pockets, and in a less serious situation, he might be rocking on his heels. He currently wasn't.

"Yeah," she said. "Why wouldn't I?"

He barely smiled, looking away before he looked back up at her. "I've lived a very long life, Anna, and do you know what that's taught me? That life is never guaranteed. You want to throw your life away like it means nothing-"

"No."

The seriousness with which she said the word was due to her past experiences, the ones that she hadn't shared with his future self but that she was more than ready to, now.

"That's not what I do," she told him. He regarded her with a distant expression, searching her.

"Really?" he asked. "Because even before you were taken from me, you were pretty cavalier with your life."

"I'm less careful with my life because I know I'll come back, but don't mistake that for thinking that I take life for granted, especially my own. I don't. I know what it's like-" she sucked in a sharp breath before she shook her head. "Just trust me when I say that I'm not gambling my life away because it means nothing."

"But you do gamble," he said.

"I do," she agreed. "Because I know that I'll come back, but the people around me don't have the slightest bit of a chance of doing the same, and that's who I've sworn to help and sworn to protect." She readjusted. "Well, as much as I'm allowed, anyway," she practically grumbled, looking away.

She heard him huff out a small breath of exasperation but when she looked back over at him, she saw nothing but fondness reflected in his eyes.

"Rose is making dinner," he said, apparently done with the conversation. "Wanted to know if you were up for a bit of spaghetti and meatballs. She's going all-out, which probably has to do with the fact that she feels guilty for leaving you on your own. Doesn't matter that I've already explained that she's nothing to feel guilty for-"

"Especially because that dude probably would've killed her to get to me, if not at least injure- though why did he want me?" she asked.

"That _dude_ was a guard, sworn to serve and protect the royal line," the Doctor said, his eyes flashing with that same previous anger. "Hunting and killing tr'ellenars became a right of passage for the next in line. Kill a tr'ellenar, become the next ruler sort of thing. He thought that by killing you, he'd become king. The only reason that was even a thing was because a rift had opened between here and Earth, which allowed unsuspecting cavemen and women to come through and be labeled as nothing more than animals. When they saw how difficult it was to deal with those they'd labeled as tr'ellenars, they became something for the royal family to hunt to prove they were worthy to be next in line. I'm not sure what that guard was thinking except that he was a massive _moron,"_ he said. "Wouldn't have worked anyway, no matter what workaround he'd made up in his own mind."

She raised her eyebrow before she nodded. "Okay. Good to know. So, yeah, it's actually a good bit of fortune that she wasn't there, considering he definitely would've killed her and you would've then- well." She cleared her throat, looking away so as to purposefully avoid the look on his face that she knew she'd see when he even _thought_ of Rose in danger.

Not that she was aware that that look was also on her behalf. She didn't know that the Doctor still loved her, even if it wasn't in the way she wanted him to.

He didn't correct her on this, merely cleared his throat, wishing it was that easy to clear the thoughts that had started sprouting in his mind.

"So, up for some food? Yes? No?"

"Yeah, food would be _great,"_ she said, the sentiment sounding sarcastic even though she didn't mean it to. She sat back on the bed. "You know what would be even better?"

"What?"

"Not being cold. That would be phenomenal."

"The blood transfusion's done," he said, opening the door.

"Oh."

She looked down to see that the IV was retracting from her arm, leaving nothing in it's wake. Tardis technology really was the best, she thought.

"Anna?"

"Yes, Doctor," she said, though when she looked over at him, she was surprised by the serious look on his face.

"No amount of you coming back to life will ever stop me from worrying about you dying," he told her. "Just in case you thought it was that simple."

She rolled her eyes, looking up to the ceiling. "I saved friggin _Gallifrey,_ dude," she said. "So I don't-"

"Which is _why_ I worry about you, but especially about you dying." He cleared his throat. "Among other reasons, anyway." She startled, looking over at him, and he smiled at her, though it was strained. "I'll see you in a minute," he told her. "Need to check on the food." He nodded at her.

"Wait, Doctor?"

He raised his eyebrows, turning to look back at her.

"Yes, Anna," he said, in the same tone that she'd used.

"Thanks for saving my life."

He made a noise in the back of his throat. "Please," he said. "You saved Gallifrey, remember? Least I can do. And I will do it as many times as you need me to." She smiled and he smiled back, before he started to walk out the door. He stopped once more. "Though, if you could _maybe_ tone it down on the whole dying bit, my hearts would greatly appreciate it."

She laughed. "I'll see what I can do."

"You better!" he called back to her, as he walked from the medbay, and this time, he didn't look back.

She laid back down on the bed, a smile on her face.

Despite the fact that he'd cautioned her against falling asleep, as well as the cold in her veins, she still managed to fall into a deep sleep, the darkness a much more peaceful version than what it had been previously.


	6. Chapter Six

Anna awoke to knocking.

She grumbled, looking over at the door, though she was quickly distracted by the thought that she was no longer in any pain. She looked down at her shoulder to see that there was a slight scar left there where the arrow (or whatever it actually had been, though she suspected it was something more sturdy than an arrow) had pierced it.

Anna didn't have many scars, courtesy of always being able to heal. She liked the idea of them, though. Scars told a story about where a person had been in their life. Perhaps she would keep this one, if only for the fact that it would probably be one of the only times she'd be able to have a scar.

She reconsidered that after a moment. With the amount she was either low on energy or had her powers off completely, she doubted now was the last time she'd have a chance to get a scar.

Besides, with the way the Doctor's guilt complex worked, she was sure he would blame himself every time he saw her with her shirt off.

There were many things she wanted him to be thinking when her shirt was off. His guilt was not one of them.

There was another gentle knocking at the door, and she glanced over at it before she remembered that that was what had woken her up in the first place.

"Come in!" she shouted to whoever was on the other side of the door.

Rose's meek face peaked out from behind the door. "Hello," she said, walking in as the door slid shut behind her. "Just wanted to check and see how you're doing."

"I'm good, yeah," she said. "All healed up and everything."

"Right. Listen, I'm- I'm really sorry for leaving you, earlier-"

"Yeah, that's- really, it's fine, it's better, actually, cause if you hadn't I've no doubt that awful guard might've tried to kill you and then, well, I probably would've died trying to defend you, so-"

Rose looked confused, though it was tinged with amusement from Anna's rambling, if she had to guess. "What?" she asked. "You hardly know me, why would you have died trying to defend me?"

Anna shrugged, relieved that she wasn't in pain. "Because you're Rose Tyler," she said, simply.

"He talks about me?" Rose asked, sounding surprised, before grief crossed her face and she looked much more glum than she had before.

"He doesn't have to," she said, and at Rose's confusion, she panicked. "Erm. All-all powerful being," she told her. "I, erm, know everything. Including stuff about people that he's traveled with."

"Yeah, what does that mean, exactly?" she asked, crossing her arms as she searched Anna. "The Doctor was a little vague about it."

She smiled slightly. "And by that you mean he didn't explain it at all?"

"Pretty much just stuck with 'all-powerful being', yeah," she said, smiling a little.

"What it says on the tin," she told her. "I can do anything and everything. Bit low on power at the mo because of, well, reasons, but the point is, usually I can do anything and everything."

"Like save Gallifrey," she said.

"Exactly."

She had this weird feeling in what did exist of her time sense (which was limited, because, even though the Doctor liked to swear up and down that her feelings were time sense, that wasn't the case), that she'd had a conversation like this with Rose in another timeline. She shrugged it off, chalking it up to the Anna in the alternate timeline.

For a moment, she was distracted with thoughts of the other Doctor, the one that belonged to that Anna. He'd wanted to trap a different Anna, and now that Anna'd gotten some distance from everything, she still didn't agree with his actions.

It didn't matter. She wouldn't see that Anna again because that Anna was taken care of, and hopefully happy, though there was a part of her that couldn't help but wonder if she'd resolved everything and gotten the help that she needed. Depression was no joke. It was even more so with an all-powerful being.

Still, she pushed these thoughts away, looking up at Rose as she continued.

"I... sort of thought that's why you left, actually," Rose said, and she raised her eyebrows, searching her. "Not that it's not great that you're back and everything, though the Doctor said something about crossing into your own personal timestream, or something?" she asked. "But anyway, he said that you left to, like, perform miracles for other people. I still don't know... I mean, what happened? Why now?"

"Like I said before, I don't know what I'm doing here," she told her.

Rose's eyes widened. "Oh, right," she said. "Completely forgot about that."

"Yeah, but, erm, well... I mean, that's part of the reason that I'm so drained. Something happened in the- and you can't tell him this-..." she reconsidered. "Actually, yeah, just to be on the safe side, but anyway, we were in the Paris Catacombs and something like, attacked me? Still don't know what it was."

"Is he okay?" Rose asked, concerned. "In the- the future or whatever."

"That's part of the reason that I decided on waiting until I'm back up to full power. If this thing has the power to throw me back in time and drain me, then I'm not really interested in going up against it without all of my energy." She looked up in consideration. "Besides which, the differential in timelines between fixing what happened with you two might send a ripple through time that I can take advantage of. Just to distract it so that I can grab him and then skedaddle away."

"What, you're not gonna stick around and see what it is?"

"I can do that from afar," she said. "Unless you'd like me to end up even further back in your past and you can have an even older and more annoyed Anna what's sticking around."

"I mean, it's not like I mind you here or anything," she said. She looked troubled for a moment. "What you said, though, about fixing what happened... between him and me, or whatever... I mean, can you do it?"

Anna searched her. "I can," she said, carefully, after a moment. "But there's no telling what'll happen after I do it."

"How'd you mean?" she asked, starting to look hopeful before it looked like her hopes were dashed.

Rose had been so young on the show, but looking at her now, she didn't see a young adult. She saw a woman, someone who had grown up and learned and changed. She'd become the person she'd probably always wanted to be. Anna wanted to promise her a future in which she'd get to keep the life she'd always wanted, but she didn't want it to be without caution.

"I mean I might... fix what happened, and then something even worse can happen. Or, I might fix it and then it ends up that you two have a happy life for the rest of your lives. But either way, you take the chance that something of a worse nature occurs."

She considered it. "You said that, in the future, I was happy-"

"If you're about to ask for future knowledge, I can't give that to you."

She looked annoyed. "You've already given it me," she said.

"I said that you were happy," she pointed out. "There's a difference between that and actually telling you the day to day, though to be fair, telling you that you're happy was more than I should've done anyway."

Rose looked away, frowning deeper.

"If I'm happy in the future, and he's happy and traveling with you, then..." she looked over at her. "Why even offer to change it in the first place?"

"I already said, I don't know what sent me back here-"

"Except that you do," she reminded her. "Because you said that you were attacked, or sommat."

She opened her mouth, before she closed it. "Oh," she said. "Right."

Rose stood up taller, letting her hands fall to her sides. "What if something sent you back here, wanting to disrupt the timelines?"

She felt a newfound sense of urgency flying through her, and she got up from the bed, running past Rose. "Oh my god, _Doctor!"_

#####

The Doctor looked around, wondering what had just happened.

One second, Anna was there, a look on her face and the next...

"Anna?" he tentatively called out. The only thing that happened was that his voice echoed back to him from the catacomb walls, rows and rows of human skulls staring back at him. He frowned, taking a few steps forward. "Anna!" he called again, his face pulling down in annoyance.

Seriously, where had she just gone? She'd wanted to talk about Vegas, the Tardis had tilted to the side, and now she'd just... up and vanished.

If she hadn't wanted to talk about Vegas, she didn't have to go to such great lengths, he thought, but he called out for her once more. "Anna!"

A draught flew through the corridor he was in and he sighed, rolling his eyes.

"Oh goodness no."

It was a second after he'd said it that he realized why he was saying it.

She'd been teleported out. What if this was as it had been with the Tilan, and he was about to see Anna ripped to shreds in the connection that they shared and-

"Anna!" he called out again, just once more for good measure, before he ran back to the Tardis.

Ten minutes later, he'd run the scans, and according to them, something had yanked Anna back.

It wasn't good, though. Because it looked as if something had yanked her to coordinates that the Tardis recognized.

"Oh, dear."

Because it meant that she'd gone to somewhere in his past.

He quickly searched his time sense and his memories to see if time was being rewritten, but it didn't appear to be. He compared the coordinates with where (and who) he'd been at the time, and he frowned.

"Okay," he said. "Except I still remember the black hole and the devil and the ood that I didn't save, so..."

Which meant that, whoever it was, they hadn't pulled her back there to disrupt his timeline. They'd done it to grab her and take her where he couldn't reach her.

He felt anger growing within him. Even if she was an all-powerful being and therefore not as vulnerable as other people, she was still his wife. They didn't just get to grab her without consequences.

It would take him some time, but he could find a workaround to being in his own past. When he did, there would be nowhere that the people who took Anna could hide.

#####

"You think that somebody deliberately brought you back here to mess with the timeline?"

She shrugged helplessly. "I don't know why else I would've suddenly and randomly appeared in the past. It doesn't make sense."

"What exactly happened?"

She furrowed her brows. "After the whole 'undoing it' incident, you really think I'm just gonna talk about the future? No, mister, you've scared me off of that forever."

"I mean, good," he said, pausing his endeavor of running his fingers through his hair. She was hit with a pang of longing, remembrance of doing the same thing flashing through her mind. She quickly shoved it off. She would never be allowed to do that again. Not with this him, at any rate.

Seeing past versions of her husband sucked.

"But also, that means there's not much I can do. The space base is gone, fell into the black hole, which means that I can't even head back and take any readings about what might've happened. Though, the easy solution is to just..."

He frowned, looking over at her.

"We're morons," he told her, in no uncertain terms.

"You know, that's the second time you've called me a moron, and as your- _friend,"_ she corrected herself. "It's starting to get really-"

He waved her off. "Fine, fine, sorry," he said. "But why haven't we just set a date and time for the future me to come and pick you up?"

"Because I was planning on fixing, well, you know."

"Does that mean you won't, now?"

She looked over at Rose before she shrugged. "It's up to you, I guess."

"Except you both just said you think somebody sent you back in time to sabotage the timeline-"

"Then they obviously have no idea how my powers actually work," she told him. "Because even if I do mess something up in this state, I can fix it when I get back up to full power."

"Unless they had a way of stopping that from occurring."

She frowned, looking over at him. "How'd you mean?"

"If they can drain you at will, then what's to stop them from doing it until you're so drained that you just..."

It clicked for her a moment after it clicked for him.

"You're not thinking..."

"What?" Rose asked, but Anna shook her head.

"I took care of the angels," she told him. "Put them in an alternate dimension."

"You can do that?" Rose asked.

"So there's no way that they could've found their way back?"

"Absolutely not," she told him. "That's sort of the whole point." she turned to Rose next. "Long story short, there's these creatures called the-"

"Weeping Angels, yeah, he explained that bit."

"Shocking-"

"Oi!"

"Point being, in order to take care of them, I put them in an alternate dimension, basically made them defenseless. Or, no, well, basically made it impossible for them to get back here. Besides, it didn't... feel like that."

"What did it feel like?"

"Evil," she said, simply, before her eyes widened. "Oh."

"Oh, what?"

She looked over at him sheepishly. "Well, you know. The black hole was there for a reason. It was protecting something ancient. Something powerful. Something evil. In-in short, it was- well, the legend that the devil was based on, anyway- hold on, oh my god!"

"What now?" the Doctor asked, looking bewildered.

"You- you talked about the events that happened like- like- oh for goodness-" she rubbed her eyes. "We didn't _just_ erase your memories, we replaced them, and from the sounds of it, it's from the- well, the, the, you know what."

"What?" he asked.

"Yeah, what?"

She shook her head. "I'll explain it later. Point being..." she blew out a breath. "Okay, so we know that the devil existed at Krop Tor-"

"Do we?"

"What's Krop Tor?"

"The planet at the black hole, and yes, Rose, or at least we know that whatever the legend is based off of actually exists. We know that I was taken from..." she frowned, looking down. "Okay, but that doesn't make sense," she said, quietly. She furrowed her brow. "I mean, I guess it could." She looked up and at the look on their faces, she spoke. "There was a movie that I watched called, As Above, So Below, and in it, the Paris Catacombs were basically connected to hell. Like, the main characters crawled through hell."

"That's cheerful," Rose cut in.

She rolled her eyes. "The point is, if... with my powers, it's entirely possible that I may have subconsciously connected the Paris Catacombs to... well, this version of hell, anyway, because what is hell but the place where the devil lives, and in this version of reality, the devil lives on Krop Tor. Ergo, hell is Krop Tor, ergo, I... subconsciously somehow accidentally, you know... maybe connected the two. Somehow."

"And when Krop Tor fell into the black hole, the connection would've been disrupted. The question is, how did you get pulled through from the Paris Catacombs to Krop Tor?"

"Do you do that often, though?" Rose asked. "Subconsciously create tunnels from one place to the next?"

She shrugged. "Dunno. Terribly interested to find out, though. And also, I was thinking that the devil himself had somehow pulled me through. He was able to possess the crewmates, and other antics. It's entirely possible that he might've sensed how much power I had and then, using some of the powers he had, pulled me through in order to possess someone more powerful than who he would've done before." She snapped. "Except he didn't know that I knew about him and would foil his plan before he even got the chance."

"Still doesn't explain why you were drained when you came through, though."

"Oh. Right. Um. Maybe he tapped into my power in order to pull me through? He possessed people. It actually makes sense, when you think about it-"

"Does it?"

"Because of what it felt like when I was pulled through. Like I was being attacked. He could've possessed me, but all that he was able to do was get the energy to drain me and then push me through."

"But he didn't, though, " Rose pointed out. "Because you still had energy to do all that stuff."

"Most people don't realize how much power I actually have," she told Rose. "Besides which, if he'd wanted to possess me entirely, he probably would've wanted me drained and then possessed so that he could still use-" she sucked in a breath through her teeth. "Ooh, it's a really good thing he wasn't able to do much more than that. Any questions?"

"Just one," the Doctor said. "Where do you want me to drop you off?"

She frowned. "Sorry, what?" she asked, at the same time that Rose asked, "What?"

The Doctor replied, "Well, I can drop you off, have my future self come and get you and do whatever actually needs to be done for the memories for me and Rose."

She opened and closed her mouth, holding up her finger, before she spoke, hesitantly. "Yeah, I'm- I'm actually ninety eight percent sure that Rose remembered."

He was the one saying, "Sorry, what?"

She shrugged. "I thought- I mean, the way that Rose was acting made absolutely no sense," she told him. "I thought when we saw her again, she would, like, hate me, which has nothing to do with you, by the way, and now that I'm saying it out loud- woah, sorry, what?" she asked, looking between the two of them.

"What do you mean, when we saw her again?"

For a blissful second, she didn't understand what he meant. And then, it clicked for her.

"Oh, for the love of-"

#####

It turned out that it was more than entirely possible that Rose didn't remember. In fact, it was more than likely that the mind treatment the Doctor got was the same thing that happened to Rose. Except for the small matter that there would be a small hole in hers that would allow her to remember that Anna was someone she'd met before, someone important, but she wouldn't be able to place why.

It was why she'd been nothing but curious about Anna and felt a longing to remember why she was so important.

In the present, they'd decided a time and place for the future Doctor to pick her up, though there was sadness present for all of them. The Doctor and Rose both knew that it was possible for them to change things, to be together for longer, but both of them knew enough to know that they'd be happy whatever the outcome (even if Rose could never understand how she could be happy outside of a life inside the Tardis, traveling with the love of her life).

Anna was sad because, although she wanted to change things, she wouldn't do something that neither of them wanted.

They landed and Anna stepped out first, sadness following every step. It quickly turned to panic when the Tardis door slammed shut behind her, and the Tardis took off.

"Hey!" she shouted after them, reaching out for the Tardis, only to fall directly through.

She immediately popped back up, spinning in a circle before she huffed out a breath. She looked around, wondering what she was supposed to do now. The Doctor had dropped her off, fine, but she was now, what? In the-

Her eyes widened at the sight she almost immediately recognized.

The Tardis had dropped her off at Roald Dahl Plass.

She spun back around to the spot that the Tardis had been, letting out an errant, "What the-" Before she realized.

Rose wasn't the only unresolved thing from _Journey's End_. She still had Jack Harkness to deal with.

She cursed under her breath, letting out a sigh, before she turned away. _Well, hey,_ she thought. _At least those three weeks were good for something_.


	7. Chapter 7

She had to walk to get to the homely and already furnished flat she'd secured for the occasion. It was only a couple of miles from Roald Dahl Plass proper, just far enough from Torchwood that Jack wouldn't get suspicious but close enough that she could still walk to work. On the subject of Jack, she would have to expend the tiniest amount of energy when she got back to the flat in order to delete security footage. She was getting her energy back much faster than she had prior, so at least there was that.

Of course, this was Anna's life. Nothing could ever be that simple.

"Anna Monroe!"

She frowned, looking around, before her eyes landed on the SUV parked next to the sidewalk, the occupant already exited the car.

"Oh, god," she said, walking away from him.

"Not quite, I'm afraid," he said. "We didn't get to finish our little chat!"

"Really?" she asked, whirling on her heel to look at him. "Because I'm about ninety eight percent certain that- okay."

He'd gotten into her personal space, hovering over her.

"You'll come with me now or-"

"Or you'll have this entire block destroyed, yadda, yadda, yadda, I heard the first time round, Saxon-"

Like a viper, he snatched her upper arm in his grip, yanking her to him, though the move looked nothing but gentle. Only looked gentle. Still hurt.

"I will have more than this block destroyed if you don't come with me, right now." He smiled cordially at her. "And that is a promise."

"You know, I let you do this whole song and dance routine before. I'm not really in the mood for it. Got things what need doing, so, you know. Bye."

She expended the smallest amount of energy to teleport away from him (and was more than pleasantly surprised that her chest didn't even hurt after it was done). She only teleported a few feet away, though. Not really enough to make a difference, when it came down to it.

"All right, you caught me! I'm bluffing," he said, all good nature and smiles as he caught up to her. "I am curious, though. You said something about the drums, before, about how you were the one what removed them. Could you put them back?"

She looked over at him as if he were insane. "You're asking me to-"

"Oh, goodness no," he said, laughing and pleasant all the while.

She recognized this act for what it was. She'd put her foot down so he was acting as if before hadn't happened, trying to make it out like she was the one what had started the whole thing in the first place. How could he do any wrong, when he was nothing but sweet and charming, especially for all the world to see?

"No, I'm merely asking if you can," he said.

She put on a smile of her own, looking over at him. "You want something. I know you do. Why don't you just come out and say it?"

"I believe I did, back on the beach," he pointed out. "Come and rule by my side, I'm pretty sure those were my exact words."

Her smile did widen. She was genuinely amused. "I'm pretty sure your exact words were, 'Well, you would've been something more like a pet, if it's any consolation'."

"Did I?" he asked, feigning innocence. "I've got a terrible memory when it comes to these things."

She rolled her eyes. "What do you want, Saxon?"

"So you can't put the drums back, then?"

She turned to him, stopping them in the middle of the street. "I can turn your pretty boy face inside out in the blink of an eye. Of course I can put some silly little drums back," she told him, searching him.

"Woah, ho, ho, no need to do anything hasty. I merely asked a question," he said, holding his hands up.

"You're merely trying manipulation tactics on me," she said.

He searched her. "Have much experience with those, then?"

She shrugged. "Maybe," she said. "Technically, I have experience with everything. I am an all-powerful being, after all."

"Including destroying civilizations?"

She'd already had a weird day. She just burst out laughing.

"Only you, Saxon. Only you."

He suddenly stepped in front of her and she barely startled before she rolled her eyes once more. It had the intended effect, though. Although he didn't know this, she was still thinking about Gavin and his face flashed before her eyes for a moment.

 _Don't you dare, Monroe_ , she thought. She stood up taller, searching him, trying her hardest _not_ to lose her cool in front of the likes of _him_.

"I'm taking that as a no, then," he said. At her questioning gaze, he elaborated. "You don't have any experience with destroying civilizations."

She searched him. "What does my putting the drums back have to do with if I've destroyed a civilization or not?"

He smiled slightly. "Walk with me," he said, and he turned around and began to walk down the street.

"Um. No?"

"Come on, Anna, it's a harmless conversation. Even the Doctor couldn't take issue with that."

She furrowed her brow. "What's he got to do with- you know what? Fine. But only because I've got nothing better to do."

That was a lie, but the truth was that she had been hoping he'd give up on his interest of her. He was making it explicitly clear that he wouldn't be doing that, so now, she had to give him the illusion that she was in control. She might've been gaining energy back rather quickly, but that didn't mean that she could pull out a full-stop miracle like getting away from him. It meant following after him, under the guise that she was just bored.

"You have all of this power, but you don't actually use it."

She rolled her eyes, sighing.

"Just because I don't use it in the way that you want me to doesn't mean that I don't use it. Do you know what saving a life, as opposed to destroying one, does? Creates more entropy in the universe. It means I'm contributing more to the universe by saving someone than by destroying them," she told him.

"Fine," he said, and she felt genuine surprise roll through her, looking up at him. "But, have you ever tried destroying a universe, just to see how it felt?"

"I know how it would feel. Boring," she told him. "And tedious. Because I'd have to put the universe back."

"But you're an all-powerful being," he pointed out. "You can just do things in the blink of an eye, or so the stories say-"

"Which, by the way, who have you been talking to that you hear all of these things about me?"

"Are they not true?" he asked her.

"They're very true. I'm just curious how Mr. 'Stuck on Earth' managed to hear rumors about me all the way out here, especially considering I doubt there was much information about me all the way at the end of the universe."

He waved his hand back and forth. "That's neither here nor there," he told her. "What's both is that you can do things in the blink of an eye, which means that you could destroy a universe in the blink of an eye, revel in the destruction, and then put it back just the same."

"But I don't want to," she told him.

"You're only saying that because you haven't tried it," he told her. "You don't know what it's like to hold someone's very life in your hands, to see that fear in their eyes and to know that you are the only thing standing between them and a painful death... and then be the cause of that painful death. It's... There's no way to describe it," he told her, looking up and away, genuine emotion bleeding through to his eyes for the first time... well, ever. "But the closest thing I can get to it is _exhilarating._ That is the only time you will ever feel truly alive, Anna Monroe." He looked over at her. "And I can help you to feel that way."

She smiled slightly, searching him. "For a price, of course."

He threw her a cordial smile. "For an all-powerful being who has the ability to do anything she wants in the blink of an eye, this would be pennies in comparison."

Her interest _was_ piqued, now. "You mean you want something besides me being your pet- I mean, _ruling by your side_?"

"Your role in the days to come has nothing to do with what I'm offering you," he told her, and she actually snorted out a laugh at that, unable to completely conceal it. "I'm offering you a chance to feel truly alive," he told her. "For what's probably the first time in your life. What do you say, Anna Monroe? Feel up to feeling alive?"

She hissed in a breath. "You know what, Saxon? It has been mildly fun, trying to get inside your mind for a minute and a half, but I really am bored, now. Have a lovely-"

She startled, letting out a surprised cry. It was lost among the screams on the street, everybody scrambling around as they tried to get away from the sudden explosion that had occurred down the street from her.

"Shit," she said, and when she turned to look at him, she saw that, in true villain fashion, he was holding a detonator button in his hand. "What the-"

He winked before he pressed it again.

She heard another explosion and she ducked before she looked up at him.

"How the- no, stop!" she said, and he raised his eyebrows, smiling slightly.

"Funny what sorts of things you can find on Earth. Weapons seem to be these humans specialty. Commission the right person, and you can make a bomb barely bigger than my hand that packs quite the punch, as you can see." He smirked, looking down on her, before he put on a faux-frown. "But, that should be easy enough to stop, shouldn't it? Considering that you're an all-powerful being and you can destroy universes in the blink of an eye and do the reverse in just the same." His face transformed to faux-shock. "Or, I'm sorry, is somebody running on _low energy_?"

She couldn't hide the shock completely. He searched her, a triumphant smile on his face.

"What?" he asked. "You didn't think I was just chatting away the last time we talked, do you? No, no, no, I was busy, taking readings and the like, seeing how those funny little powers of yours worked! Do you know what I found, much to my own surprise, _Anna?"_ he took a step towards her. "That your powers have a limit. More than that, they can be drained. Here's my favorite bit, though: my scans, the ones I've been running while we've been talking absolute _nonsense?_ They have just come back and revealed that that's exactly what you are. Drained. You couldn't stop a fly, let alone the likes of me. So," he said. "I would suggest you coming along quietly..." He held up the detonator, raising his eyebrows. "Or, I could simply cause that much more carnage."

In that moment, she saw him, then, more clearly than she had ever seen anybody in her entire life.

He was a child.

That's all that he was. He was a tantruming child who wanted attention, and when he didn't get it, he blew things up and destroyed everything in his wake until he did.

And it just made her angry.

No matter what had happened to him, there was always another option. There was always another way to be. In another life, his drums wouldn't have been his hamartia. They would've been his conflict that he could've overcome. She wasn't saying that it would've been easy, but Harold Saxon was far from the victim of bad circumstances.

Even outside of the influence of the drums later in life, he still chose to be this.

She was angry. Right now, she was more angry than she had been in a really long time.

So, she did what she normally did when she was this angry. She put the biggest smile on her face.

"Oh, buddy," she said. "Have you ever counted the chickens before they've hatched my friend. You _moron."_

She lost all of her smile.

In the blink of an eye, the people what could be saved were, because apparently, some of them _did_ have to die. She sent the ones she could to an alternate dimension.

In the wake of the chaos, nobody noticed that Anna Monroe and Harold Saxon teleported away in the blink of an eye.

#####

Normally, Anna didn't like using the 'it doesn't take energy' trick. Mainly, it was because she didn't know what it did to the fabric of the universe. In reality, it was probably harmless; this was her, after all, able to take apart and put together universes in the blink of an eye. But, she also didn't like using it because, sometimes, there was a reason something was so hard to accomplish. It allowed her to stop and take stock of what was happening, to make a better decision.

There was also another reason that she didn't use the 'it doesn't take energy' trick, and it was because of the fact that she didn't like to think of what tricks she could do with it.

Like, for example, the fact that she hadn't thought of using the 'it doesn't take energy' trick to get her energy back to full.

In retrospect, that was probably what had allowed her to get her energy back up to full before, not the idea that she was healed. Although, technically speaking, if it was just about giving herself permission to do it, then, in all likelihood, that was probably what had happened. She'd subconsciously given herself permission to use the 'it doesn't take any energy' trick. And, she had.

She did so now as well, pulling herself back up to full power.

She felt the energy of it thrumming through her veins and she smiled. She was no longer smiling when she felt something bowling her over, and that probably would've been fine... Except for the small fact that, when she hit the ground, she hit her head.

She blacked out almost instantly.

#####

When she came to, she found her wrists and ankles tied to a chair. She gently tested the restraints before she groaned.

She felt awful. Somebody had drained her power, and was continuing to do so.

"I don't know why it never occurred to me to just take your energy for myself." She managed to flutter her eyes open, looking up at him... before she started smiling.

She full blown started to laugh before he smacked her across the face and then grabbed her chin in a harsh hold.

"And just what do you think is so funny?"

"You moron," she seethed, through her teeth, which resulted in him hitting her so hard that stars danced before her eyes. She was breathing hard as he reached up and grabbed her chin.

"Want to try that again?" he asked, even as she felt the blood welling up from her newly acquired split lip to trickle down her chin.

"You can't use my energy. It's not. Compatible."

He gripped her jaw tighter and she cringed. "Which means what?" he asked her.

She found the lie spilling from her mouth before she could fully comprehend what she was saying.

"I exist on a different wavelength than the rest of the universe. Trying to use my energy would be like trying to- well, use a double a battery on a triple a appliance, it doesn't. Work."

He searched her with a disbelief and amazement, but neither were good. More like _I cannot believe I have to deal with someone so stupid_. "Then I'll just _convert_ it," he told her. He shook his head, standing. "Honestly, I've no idea what the Doctor sees in you. He's not usually the one to go for the powerful types, but then again, he has gotten old. Maybe he's gotten senile."

He sounded strangely delighted by the thought of it.

She let out a few ragged breaths before she smiled. "Look who's talking," she said. "If he's old, then you're ancient."

"Are you still talking?" he asked. "I'm busy, taking over the universe and everything. I haven't the time for all-powerful beings who are too weak and wasteful to know how to do anything properly."

She smiled slightly before she started to use the 'it doesn't take energy' trick. She frowned, the thought that he'd been taking readings the last time they'd talked suddenly entering her mind. When she glanced around, she saw that the room wasn't empty by any means, equipment scattering about the room, the screens lit up with information and other things she didn't take a second glance at.

She quickly closed her eyes, using the 'it doesn't take any energy' trick to grab all of the equipment that he'd been using to monitor her and, just to be on the safe side, teleporting it into the Tardis.

For her next trick, she used the 'it doesn't take any energy' trick to move all of the energy he'd taken from her to the Tardis, before she finally used it to renew her energy.

She let the straps fall easily from her arms and ankles before she sat back in the chair, crossing her arms and legs as she searched him.

"I meant what I said before, you know." He rolled his eyes but continued to work... before he frowned at the readings. She continued to speak. "About not destroying the universe because the thought of it bored me." she shrugged. "But I also just don't get the appeal. Why make people miserable? What do you get out of that?"

He stopped... before he stiffened, turning slowly to look at her.

Of course, he wouldn't gloat that he'd gotten the readings. Not right away, anyway. Especially because he probably didn't want her to know that he now knew how to generate that kind of energy, or at the very least, how she did it. No, instead he'd act the part of someone who was...

She actually didn't know what he would do, but she was interested to find out.

He searched her for a long moment, sizing her up. "What do you get out of helping people?" he asked.

She shrugged. "Nothing, truth be told. I just know that if there is something that I can do, I want to do that."

He searched her, barely frowning. "Why aren't you hurting me right now? In fact, why didn't you flee the second that you got yourself free from those restraints?"

She snorted. "Oh, Harold, Harold, Harold. You think I would flee from the likes of a man like you?" she asked. "You don't scare me, Harold Saxon."

"Then what does?" He put his hands into his pockets, smirking as he looked down at her, as he was standing and she was not. "Because I'd say it's the person what broke you and then threw you away like a toy they were done playing with. I'd go so far as to say that you fled from them, and hid in the Doctor's skirts, and you've been doing so ever since. I know what you are, Anna Monroe, and that is nothing except for a coward with a fancy bag of parlor tricks who wouldn't know true power if it hit them upside the head."

She raised her eyebrows, leaning back in her seat. "And what does that make the Doctor?"

Confusion and annoyance flashed across his face. "What does he have to do with anything?"

She shrugged. "He's a self-proclaimed coward who ran from home, who hid in the metaphorical skirts of the universe. He's also got a bag of fancy parlor tricks who has power but doesn't, and I quote, 'know how to use it'." She stood, narrowing her eyes as she put her own hands into her pockets. "So why is it that you dislike me so much, but all that you ever do is try to show off to the Doctor?"

His smirked widened on his face. "Oh, dear," he said. "If you think the Doctor is _anything_ that simple, then you're simpler than I thought."

"Then enlighten me," she said.

"I'm done wasting my time with the likes of a woman who won't even fight to save her own life." He searched her. "You disgust me, and if I could rid the universe of you, I would, in an absolute heartsbeat."

She started to make a comment about a drum beat, but a feeling came in at the exact same moment.

Anna had had many feelings in her lifetime, but there were only a handful that were so strong that the very thought of changing them almost shifted the fabric of the universe.

This moment, right here? This was one of them.

 _But you could, though_ , she was supposed to say. Drain me of my energy and I'm dead.

The likes of Harold Saxon couldn't have that information. The thought of it made her skin crawl and her jaw ache with how hard she was clenching her teeth together.

But, not doing this? Not doing this would change everything, forever.

So, even despite the fact that he would likely kill her in about a moment or two... She spoke.

"But you could though." He'd already started walking past her, but he didn't stop and turn. Her heart was pounding so hard in her chest she worried for a moment that it would burst, but a moment later, it still hadn't. A moment later, she released the words. "Drain me of all of my energy and I'm dead."

It seemed to take him a moment to process what she'd said. When he did, he jerked, full stop, before he slowly turned on his heel.

 _Oh no oh no oh_ fuck _what did I just do what the_ hell _did I just do-_

"What did you just say?"

She swallowed against the dryness in her mouth and wished, more than anything, that the Doctor was there, by her side. If she were about to die she wanted to see her husband one last time, _what did I just do_?!

But, a moment later, the Doctor hadn't appeared.

And, she spoke once more.

"You drain me of my energy and I die." She snapped her shaking fingers. "Poof. Just like that."

A look grew in his eyes at that, and a smile evolved over his face. He started to stalk over to her, exactly like a predator approaching prey, and it took everything in her not to flinch, not to flee, not to hide like the coward she truly was.

She might've wanted to die at one point in her life, but now was not that time. She wanted to live more than she'd ever wanted anything in her entire life.

And right now, the man that was calling himself Harold Saxon was about to kill her.

In too little steps he was to her, standing in front of her, his hands clasped behind his back. He took up all of her personal space and she could practically feel herself vibrating with how scared she was.

He leaned down over her, speaking quietly. "Does the Doctor know that you're suicidal?"

"No."

She was so scared and so out of sorts that that was the first answer she could think to give. In all fairness, it was the truth. The Doctor didn't know what had happened in Vegas.

Perhaps now, he never would.

Saxon looked like he'd never been more delighted by anything in his entire life. It was like she'd given him all of the December holidays all wrapped up into one.

"This day just keeps getting better and better," he told her. She watched his hand like a hawk as he brought it around, but he simply reached out, playing with some hair that had fallen from her ponytail. "Of course, everything makes sense now, doesn't it? Why you'd stick around when you didn't have to, because you wanted to die but you didn't want to do it yourself. And, what better way to die than at the hands of the famous _Master?"_ he smiled, his eyes crinkling in a friendly way that made confusion thrum through her, though it wasn't anywhere near as fierce as the terror and the regret were. He tucked her hair behind her ear before he cupped her cheek in his hands in a deceptively friendly manner. She still flinched, her eyes closing.

It wasn't until that moment that she remembered she could teleport out now, she could. She could do that, she could-

She could've cried when she felt the feeling coming in saying that she couldn't.

"Oh, no, Anna, sh, it's all right," he said, and she squeezed her eyes shut when he pulled her in for a hug. Maybe she could teleport the equipment out of the room that was capable of draining her energy-

She had a feeling she shouldn't do that either.

She was absolutely and completely and utterly screwed.

Maybe this was what she had been made to do, she rationalized. Maybe she was only ever meant to live to allow the Doctor to keep Gallifrey, but that was as far as her usefulness lay. How many times had she been pulled away from him, or had her powers turned off and made vulnerable?

She'd pictured her life (and honestly, her death) in so many ways, but this? This had never been one of them.

"It's all right," he repeated, and she barely shook her head before she squeezed her eyes shut tighter. Maybe she was about to die but she didn't have to watch. "I'll help you," he said.

That had her eyes opening right quick.

He nodded. "Of course I will." He shrugged. "Just... not in the way that you probably want."

Her eyes widened.

The feeling fell through her chest a second before she felt his hand gripping the back of her neck, and she quickly teleported out of his grip to stand a few feet away.

She searched him before she teleported to the Doctor.

But, the Master was a patient man. He smiled at the thought that she would come crawling back, looking for the death she sought after. Of course, he wouldn't give it to her right away. He'd make her work for it, earn the privilege of being killed by the likes of The Master. He was already planning all the things he'd make her do before that happened.

Oh, the fun he was about to have with her.

What else was there to do until his plan came to fruition in just a few short months time?


	8. Chapter 8

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> TW: brief mentions of emotional abuse

"You're not serious, are you?"

"Genuinely, have you a got a better idea?" he asked his sort of past self. This version of him was so... different. He couldn't describe why this version of the Janis Joplin jacket was so different to the actual past him, but he just... was. Especially because they couldn't seem to agree on any one course of action when it came to a mental health plan for this Anna.

Once Anna One had been teleported out with some random blonde woman (who wasn't Rose), he'd expected to be brought home shortly thereafter. He hadn't been, but luckily for him, this version of himself and Anna were both still mucking about here. He thought perhaps he could lend a hand. After all, two Doctors in this instance would more than likely be better than one, for the simple fact that she was an all-powerful being and didn't seem to be functioning within the right state of mind.

"You have got to be kidding me."

He immediately whirled around, excitement filling his hearts at the prospect of Anna teleporting back to him. When he noticed the lack of the Olympic necklace she'd worn after he'd bought it for her as a souvenir on a whim during the 2012 Olympics, he felt himself deflating a little bit.

"Anna," he said, not doubting in the least that his strained smile would've looked anything but if it had been anybody but Anna. "What a pleasant surprise." He clapped his hands together. "See you've got your powers back on, that's marvelous." He raised his eyebrows, putting his hand down on the console, trying to make it look natural. "Come to help us out, then?"

He'd no idea what she was doing here, but judging by the less than happy look on her face, he was sure that he was about to have to use the new precaution they'd put in place. They'd managed to puzzle together a way to shut Anna's powers off. Course, if he pressed this button, the other Anna would know as well, but it was a small sacrifice to pay if it meant that he wasn't fighting Anna One, when the only thing he even wanted to do was help her. Besides, the other Anna would only know if she tried to use her many abilities, and last he'd checked, she'd been fast asleep. Or, so the brand new vitals reading sensors they'd installed from the console room into her new room said.

Annoyance crossed her face as she crossed her arms. "I'm not, actually," she told him. "What I'm-"

"Sorry about this, then," he said, even though he was only slightly sorry.

He pressed the button.

She felt it immediately, he could see the look on her face. It was more than annoyance, almost bordering on anger.

"What. The-" she let out a noise of frustration.

A moment later, a noise blared through the console room. It was the alarm that they'd installed to let them know if Anna's powers suddenly came back on, through the unlikely event that that might occur somehow.

He quickly pressed the button again, and it had the same effect.

What it did was complicated, but basically, it created a sort of block between her and her energy. Sort of like creating a dam so that water couldn't flood the valley.

Except it was nothing like that.

Anger once again crossed her face, except this time, it was fury. It was radiating out of her pores. He had a vague memory of her looking close to this angry floating about in his time sense. The only reason he was able to access it in the midst of the storm that had been created when time had been rewritten several times was because= he'd never seen her look that angry before and he'd never seen it since.

Except, right now, she was angrier. It was startling. Her eyes widened before she folded her hands in front of her face, tightening her lips into a thin line. After a moment, she pointed at him, and spoke in a small, very controlled voice. "I will. Hurt. You. _Stop it_."

If it hadn't been Anna One, he could confidently say that she was bluffing. As it stood, Anne One seemed more prone to anger than other versions of herself. Well, from what he'd seen, anyway.

Still, he wouldn't be the Doctor if he didn't do something incredibly reckless like call an all-powerful being's bluff.

When the alarms blared again, he stared directly at her as he pressed the button, before he raised his eyebrows.

"I'd like to see you try," he challenged her.

This was Anna. At her heart, she was a good, non-violent person. She didn't hurt people. She helped them.

But, he realized much too late that something had happened to Anna One. At the issuance of his challenge, she smiled widely, though anger flew through her eyes. Consideration crossed her face after a moment as she put her hand under her chin.

"Well, I mean, I could always just tell Anna that you were planning on trapping her," she told him. "Because I might not be willing to hurt you, but that version of me created a self-defense mechanism that nearly killed me, so."

He frowned, searching her. "But that wouldn't be hurting me, would it? It would be hurting Anna, because you would be hurting her chances at trusting someone, possibly for the first time in her life."

She shrugged. "Then maybe that goes to show that you aren't someone who's trustworthy, in which case-"

She started towards the hallway and he quickly stepped in front of her, blocking her path. He was almost startled by the snarl that appeared on her face, and despite the comment that had managed to hurt him more than she would, or possibly could, ever know, he still softened.

"Something's happened," he said, and she frowned as if he were stupid. "To you, I mean," he clarified.

He knew he'd hit the mark when her whole body flinched and she looked down and away.

"Okay," he said. "Then, how about instead of threatening me, or Anna's progress, why don't you and I talk it out, eh? Sit down in the kitchen, have a cuppa-"

She looked up at him, anger and disbelief and resentment all pooling together in her eyes.

"You're manipulative, and you're cruel, and I cannot _believe_ I ever liked this version of you."

Because she was Anna, it took his brain a moment to process what she'd, and even longer for him to fully understand the implications of what she'd meant.

He felt his hearts ache at the fact that whatever had happened to Anna had turned her this cruel (even as the hurt pulsed within him at what she'd said).

Which was why he transformed, standing up taller.

"I am sorry, for whatever has happened to make you so utterly cruel, but that does not-"

She scoffed at him. "Cruel?" she asked him. "What, because I said I can't understand how I ever liked this version of you, and that's hurt your feelings?"

 _Seriously_?

He clasped his hands behind his back, searching her as he attempted to get the hurt under control. "You realize that the only difference between that version of me and me is the fact that he didn't press a button and wipe out his own kind?" he asked.

Surprise and disbelief rushed over her own face. "That's not-"

"And furthermore," he continued. "I'll have you know that he fully intended to do it, to press that button, he absolutely would've done it if you hadn't've come and messed about in affairs you had absolutely no _business_ messing about in."

Anger flew across her face at his comment. "For the record, that's not at all what I was talking about, but no, please, keep telling me all about how my saving Gallifrey was a bad. Thing!"

He shrugged. "I have no idea how else you could've meant it."

"Um, oh, I don't know, how about taking away a girl's choices who hasn't had a choice in her entire life-"

He laughed, but nothing about this was humorous. He walked past her a few steps, speaking to the room as opposed to the woman who'd hurt him more than he'd been hurt in a _long_ time. "That's a bit _rich_ coming from you, isn't it?"

"And how's that?" she asked him.

Anna was exceptional and bright, so he had no idea how she didn't already know. He turned back to her, and, because they were so close, she had to tilt her head to look up at him. "What exactly did you think that you were doing when you stopped him from pressing that button?" he asked her. "You took away the choice that he could've had." He searched her eyes, waiting for her to understand. "Do you have any idea what kind of change occurs when you do something like that, when you have to make that hard choice? He will never become the person that he is meant to, and that is on you, Anna."

She was so angry that it took her a moment to speak. "I have apologized for many things in my life, but I will not apologize for not allowing you to go through the worst tragedy of your life-"

He faux frowned. "Oh, I'm sorry, I thought I was speaking with _Anna_. Not God."

The disbelief rested on her face, and it was even worse than it had been last time.

"You're a-you're a hypocrite," she said. "How've I- how've I never, not once, seen this? Or, maybe I have, and maybe I just turned a blind eye to it because it's you, the Doctor, incredible and wonderful."

He felt his hearts sink. How long had he traveled with this version of her and _never_ seen this side of her, the one that simply thought that he was _good_ , and more than that, that it was okay to take away a choice that had changed him on such a deep level? "If that's all that you think I am then you-"

"Then I'm even more simple than you thought I was?" she waved her hand out. "Go on, say it."

His hearts nearly broke as he spoke. "Before this, I never would've thought you were anything less than completely magnificent. But now?" he shook his head. "I have no idea who you are, Anna. Not a single clue."

She stared at him for a long moment before she nodded.

"Okay," she said, quietly. "Okay. Good." She nodded and smiled. "Have a wonderful life, Doctor," she told him, before she teleported away.

He opened and closed his mouth, agony filling him before he looked away. He startled when he realized the other him was still in the room, and he ran a hand down his face, sitting down on the jumpseat.

 _"Really_ appreciated the back up, there," he said, sarcasm dripping from every part of him.

But, he sighed. They still had a lot of work to do.

#####

One second, he was alone in the console room and trying to trace the signal back to her. The next, he was turning to find her walking across the console room.

"Anna!" he said, relief filling him. "Good, you're all right! What happened?"

"Doesn't matter," she told him, gruffly, before she started towards the hallway.

He frowned before he followed after her.

"Okay. Well... is everything sorted, then?" he asked. "With whatever it was that did happen?"

"Oh, yeah," she said, in an almost sarcastic voice. "Everything's sorted, everything's peachy freakin keen."

He frowned even deeper. He searched her, trying to understand (and low key looking for injuries, but he didn't find any). "Okay," he said, slowly. "Then, did you want to talk about, what did you say, about what happened in Vegas?" he tried.

She stopped outside of a room, her hand on the doorknob. He was startled to realize that it was the room she'd slept in during the brief times they weren't together.

It was even more startling to see the almost hollow look on her face. "It doesn't matter," she told him. She bit her lip, her eyes still on the floor. "Maybe it never did," she said, quietly.

It was strange, because alarm was filling him for reasons he didn't understand. He raised his eyebrows, watching her open the door.

"Anna, hold on, just-" he said, but surprise filled him, pairing nicely with the alarm already in his system, when she closed the door. "Anna!" he called, knocking on her door.

But, she didn't respond.

#####

Anna became strangely despondent after that.

He gave her space for a few days before he knocked on her door, trying to coax her out for adventures. These days, she tended towards declining. Even when she joined him, there was a sadness in her eyes and she barely spoke, her answers one worded.

She didn't partake in the human ritual of eating, though he could only guess that she was still sleeping. When she was in her bed, anyway. She still partook in a different human ritual when they shared their bed, but he would find her extracting herself from his arms; all too soon, she was back in her room, locked up tight and unavailable to him in every sense of the word.

The only way that he could describe it was that there was a joy that had been lost from her, and the only thing he wanted to know was why.

He spent time trying to ascertain where she'd ended up, trying to pull readings from the Tardis, but that didn't prove very fruitful. He even went back to the catacombs to ascertain if he could see any kind of energy reading that would lead to a magical trail he could follow and get answers from, but he never did.

They even did the rare thing of celebrating Easter (though he was against the idea of it on principle, simply for the horror stories Anna had shared about her experiences when she was younger), but she was no more excited holding and eating chocolate that she hadn't scrounged around for hours than she had been the past month or so on the Tardis. Even the adventure with Lady Christina de Souza couldn't cheer her up. He only thought about inviting the thief for a short time before he dismissed that idea. He could barely talk to Anna now. There was no doubt another person would just scare her deeper into her depression.

That's what it was. Whatever it was had thrown her into a depression, and the only thing he could hope to do was let her work through her process and that she would eventually come and talk to him.

He put his foot down during the adventure where they saved Christmas.

"But it's a happy ending!" he tried to tell her, after the Cybermen had fallen. "All those children, saved-"

"He lost his wife," she told him, and he fell silent at that. "He was so despondent that he had to become somebody else. All those children are going to live on the streets for the rest of their lives and become miserable adults and they're just going to end up working in factories and what is the goddamn point of any of it?"

There was so much pain laced in her voice that he flinched at it, before he shook his head.

"Okay, Anna," he said, quietly. "I want you to know that I love you and that nothing will change that. Now, you've been _fairly_ despondent these past few months, and I have given you your space. I haven't even commented on the fact that the connection is practically closed down, and that's fine. Whatever reason you've got for doing so, it must be important. But Anna, you _love_ Christmas, and we've just saved it, and right now, you're acting as if we've made the situation a thousand times worse, and this is the last straw. I _need you_ to tell me what's wrong. Not for my sake, but for yours."

She curled in on herself the more he spoke, though it was only because she was trying to hide the fact that she was crying. When he finished, she shook her head.

"I can't," she said, quietly, sadly.

"Why not?" he asked, quietly, reassuringly.

She finally broke open, bursting forth with movement. She raked her fingers through her long hair before she threw her arms out. "Because I'm so _ashamed!"_ she told him, looking up at him, and he barely frowned, trying to keep an understanding look on his face. "Because I did something truly awful and it's my fault and I can't- I can't fix it, and I'm- I'm ashamed, Doctor!" she told him. "Oh my god, I'm so ashamed..."

She wasn't lying. He could feel the first thing he'd felt from her in months, that shame washing through her as fiercely as a river as she sobbed, the tears finally releasing from her.

He slowly reached out for her, encasing her in a hug. He sent as much reassurance at her as he could, and he was shocked when she not only accepted the reassurance, she clung to him and it, like a dying man to water.

Mostly though, he was grateful that she was finally letting him in.

When she calmed down a little bit, he gently cupped her face in his hands. "Whatever it is that you've done, there will be absolutely no judgment from me. Do you understand? I will not, in any sense of the word, judge you for whatever it is that you've done. I am here for you, and whatever I can do, I will. I promise," he told her, searching her.

She opened and closed her mouth, though there was little emotion when she spoke. "I told Harold Saxon how to kill me."

He frowned at that, the picture of what she was saying not at all fitting with what he'd thought she'd done (which had included but wasn't limited to accidentally destroying a planet, though why she wouldn't be able to fix that, he didn't know).

Besides which, what was she talking about, how to kill her? She couldn't die. That was one of the great things about Anna. She would always come back.

So, he started with the obvious, frowning all the while. "Who's Harold Saxon?"

"The Master," she quickly corrected herself.

He felt everything in him go cold at that.

His oldest friend, the man who had been driven insane by a drum beat only he could hear. Some part of him was relieved to find out that he'd survived the war, though there hadn't really been a doubt in his mind that he ever would. He was The Master. When hadn't he survived whatever the universe had deemed fit to throw at him?

But, that insanity meant that he was a wild card on the best of days. Why, on Earth, would Anna do something like tell him how to-

He frowned.

"Hold on, how'd you mean 'kill you'?"

Her shame from before came back, her eyes going glassy as she swallowed, looking to the left of him as she bit her lip.

"I'm sorry," she said, quietly, before she started to sob again. "I'm so, so sorry, I'm so so sorry, I'm just- I'm so sorry-"

She broke down again.

The puzzle pieces clicked.

He opened and closed his mouth, frowning as he barely shook his head.

It was something that she was ashamed of. Something that she couldn't take back.

Had Anna just killed his oldest friend, because she'd accidentally let slip the only thing that would kill her... because she was scared of dying?

His hearts were beating so fast in his chest, grief filling him. Even if that was what had happened, it was more complicated than her simply killing him. Knowing the ways Anna had been broken in the past and how much the Master liked toying with people, it was easy to see the damage he'd done before he'd...

He swallowed, before he barely smiled, placing his hands on either of Anna's shoulders.

"Anna," he said, quietly, and she barely shook her head. He glanced around before he spotted the armchairs. "Here, come on," he said, and he gently maneuvered her to the chairs. Surprisingly, she went, sitting down before she collapsed on herself, folding over herself as she put her head in her hands.

"What did I do, oh my god, what did I do, what did I do, what did I- fuck!" she shouted, stomping the floor before she breathed hard.

She wiped at the tears on her face before she barely shook her head, looking at him.

"I didn't mean to," she said, and he searched her, unable to contain the look on his face completely but nodding, because some part of him did understand, even if he was grieving the best friend he'd never gotten to save. "I just- I had a feeling-"

She'd had a what?

"-I had a feeling that I-that I should tell him and then-and then I did, and I..." she sobbed.

She got herself together moments later, and he took this moment to interject.

"Can you start from the beginning?" he asked her, quietly. "How did you- I mean, obviously he was the one what teleported you out against your will."

He couldn't help it, thinking about all the times they'd run through the fields of Gallifrey as children, flashes of memory running through his mind. He'd left Gallifrey and never looked back, and now he wanted to shake himself and call himself an idiot.

He'd left his best friend behind to suffer the insanity on his own, to deal with the drums.

Perhaps that had been when he'd become a creature of war.

She raised her eyebrows. "No," she said, startling him. "What did happen... Oh, damn it," she said, quietly, and he frowned.

"What?"

She huffed out a breath before she shook her head. "Doesn't matter, we'll... get to that later. Anyway, he met up with me in the street and said we hadn't finished our conversation from earlier, and things-"

He frowned. "What conversation?" he asked.

She waved him off. "We met once, when you were in your last body."

He frowned even deeper. "I would've remembered that," he said.

"No, he- when I was still low on power, he approached me, said he wanted to rule the universe with me- or, become a pet more like," she said, obviously imitating an accent (and obviously, it was his). "It doesn't matter-"

Something clicked for him then, though he would never guess why. Because she'd thought that a meeting with someone who would do anything for her power, including hurt her beyond repair, didn't matter, but it _did._

It mean that what happened in Vegas mattered, no matter how much she'd insisted it hadn't, and he felt like a complete idiot for not seeing that.

"Did he hurt you?" he asked her, getting back to the topic at hand.

She shrugged. "A little," she replied. "But it doesn't matter, because it wasn't permanent or anything, and he only knocked me about a little bit-"

Something about saying that triggered her, forcing her to descend once more into sobs.

He held her face in his hands and wiped her tears away and spoke to her gently. "Of course it matters," he said. "Because he hurt you and that matters."

Agony and panic erupted over her face at that. "Oh my god, I don't want to die, I don't want to die, I can't-"

Confusion filled him. If the only other person who knew how she could die was already dead, then why was she so afraid of that?

"I spent so long thinking that I didn't-" she started, before a startled look crossed her face, and she shook her head, looking away, though she didn't remove his hands on her face.

He gently guided her face back to his. "I promise you, Anna, that as long as I live, there's no possibility of that ever even _slightly_ occurring," he told her. She looked at him, both terribly afraid and terribly hopeful, all in the same measure. "I swear. You are protected." he searched her. "Okay?"

She looked like she so badly wanted to believe him for a long moment. A moment later, she allowed herself to.

"Okay," she said, though there was still some fear on her face. "I... The second time we met, I got angry. Got myself back up to full power, because I'd been drained again and I didn't want to deal with his bullcrap, and then he..." she hesitated, searching him, and his hearts clenched as he prepared himself to hear about how his best friend had tried to kill his wife before she'd killed him, instead. "There was some blustering and threats, and he basically told me that if he could exterminate me, he promised, he would."

She shook her head.

"And I just got this feeling," she told him. "That I was supposed to tell him that he could. He just had to drain my energy to do it."

Hold on, that would kill her? Permanently? Since when? He thought the angels had only almost killed her in the sense that she would've died but come back to life, but he didn't think-

He shook his head, trying to focus on the problem at hand. One life-changing revelation at a time.

"And I almost didn't," she told him, that hollow look in her eyes once more. "Why the frick would I do that, give him that much _power_ over me? Why the hell would I do something like that?" she shook her head. "There are very few times that I actually get a feeling that if I don't do something, everything will change. And, this was one of those times. Before I knew it, I'd told him."

Nausea passed over her face.

"He looked delighted. He looked like I'd given him every Christmas present he would ever get in his entire life. And he said, of course I'll help you, Anna, to die, because- because he thought that that meant that I was suicidal, and well... But, he said that he would help me, just not in the way I probably wanted him to." She shook her head. "I teleported out about a second before he was about to incapacitate me, but before that, I just had to stand there, and I was so afraid. I was so scared of dying, and what kind of hypocrite is that? What kind of coward am I? The second things get scary and I can't even function, let alone do something like be brave. What good am I?" she asked him.

He was still waiting for the part where she told him that she had killed his best friend. So far, it looked like it wasn't coming.

At her admission, he grabbed her face in his hands.

"You are every kind of good that I know, Anna. I'm sorry that this happened. I'm so, so sorry that this happened. But I'm telling you now that this, not wanting to die, being afraid because of it, that doesn't make you a coward. That makes you a living being. That's the most basic instinct, to be afraid of your life ending."

He was confused when he felt the shame come roaring to life, but he kept this off of his face and spoke.

"The fear doesn't matter. It's how you react to the fear that does." he searched her eyes. "Did you hurt him?"

"No," she said, as if that was a ridiculous notion.

"Did you kill him?"

"No, god, no, of course not, who do you think I am?"

He couldn't help that relief fell through him. Maybe that meant he was a threat, but a Master who was alive and a threat was better than a dead one any day.

Even if that threat was against the person he currently loved most in the universe.

But, this was a problem that they could deal with. They might not be able to fix it, but they could deal with it, together.

He told her as much.

"I think you're Anna Monroe," he told her. "The woman who embodies everything that I want to be. Kind and brave, even in the face of fear. You didn't hurt him, and you didn't give into that fear, and that's nothing to be ashamed of, Anna. That fear is absolutely nothing to be ashamed of."

She shook her head, speaking quietly. "You don't understand," she told him, quietly. "I had a choice, to not tell him how to hurt me, to not give him that power over me, and I chose wrong. I chose to allow a monster like him to hurt him like that again." She shook her head. "What if that makes her right about me?"

"Who?"

She shook her head again, that nausea once again overtaking her. "My mother."

With those two words, that shame came back full force. He finally understood what this was about, and he barely sat back on his heels, a different kind of anger bleeding through him.

"And how would that make her right about you, Anna?"

She shook her head, looking down and away, the grief nearly choking her with it's intensity. "Because this is _exactly_ what she accused me of, pulling this type of _crap_ , and what if, what if she never _did_ abuse me, but instead, she just said some things that I didn't like so I twisted it around and called it abuse?" she ran her hands through her hair, clutching at the roots. "Oh my god, what am I doing here?"

He gently put his hands on her knees. "You're here because you want to help people. Because you want to protect people from the kind of cruelty that your mother pushed onto you. Because it _was_ cruelty, some of the worst kind. She _was_ abusive, she _did_ abuse you, and I'm sorry that she did. I'm sorry that she said those things about you, but that in no way makes her right about you. This doesn't either. You didn't follow that feeling because you wanted to be hurt. The fact that you felt that fear, the fact that you're _still_ feeling it, proves that," he told her. She was hanging onto every word he said, like he would finally tell her the thing she needed to hear. "You followed that feeling because the very fabric of the universe would be changed if you didn't. You put the universe first, and yourself at risk, because you were proving, once again, that even in the face of the worst kind of fear, bravery can be found." He cupped her face in his hands. "And I am so incredibly proud of you, and you should be incredibly proud of yourself too, because not only did you not prove her right, but you proved her wrong. You are more incredible than a person like her could ever conceive of being, and I'm sorry that was your life before, but this is your life now, and you are protected, and loved, and no matter what, Anna, no matter what, I am here for you." He searched her eyes. "I promise you. I swear."

"Doctor," she sobbed, and she fell into his open arms, gladly, as she broke apart once more.

The Doctor thought that that was the end of it, resolved with Anna finally realizing that her monster of a mother was completely inaccurate in her assessment of her.

He had no idea that it was only the beginning.

But, he wouldn't know that until it was much too late.


End file.
